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This interview is a small excerpt from a comprehensive interview published in The Wall Street Transcript as part of the Technology Sector, available at (001-212-952-7433) or http://www.twst.com/sectors/techno.html

TWST: Can you give us a quick overview and history of lastminute.com for those not familiar with you?

Mr. Howell: Sure. lastminute.com came to market in the UK and US on NASDAQ in March 2000 and it has become the number one European e-commerce lifestyle player by giving our customers great value and solutions. What does that actually mean? It means that we want to address a number of European countries all by using e-commerce. We can offer our customers everything to do with going away, going out and staying in and that’s to do with package holidays, short breaks, hotels, flights, trains, going out, theater tickets, restaurants, sports events, other experiences etc, or staying in where we offer food delivery, home food delivery, DVD rentals, personalized TV listings. We act as gift merchants, doing everything within those categories at the last minute. The last minute we define as within perhaps the last three months or for three months out.

TWST: You elaborated a little bit on your products, you do travel to theater tickets to gifts, it’s a wide variety of products. What is new with lastminute.com since you last spoke with us?

Mr. Howell: We’ve acquired a number of businesses during the last year and we did that over a 16 week period from April to July. In the UK, we acquired a flight consolidator called TravelSelect.com which was great at providing access to flights and gave us an extra 27 airline relationships. We acquired them when they were just profitable and selling about 50 million pounds of flight only products. In June, we acquired a virtual tour operator called Destination Group which provided us access to great four and five star hotel relationships, flights and car hire all online. Destination Group is in the UK and very profitable at the time of acquisition and turning over about 50 million pounds. And then in July we acquired a company called TravelPrice.com, which was our principle competitor in France, Spain and Italy also had a presence in Belgium and they sell flight and package holidays again online. The whole rationale for the acquisition was to put two competing businesses together realise the synergies which amount to 10 million Euros annually in a full financial year and you have a very strong business going forward. And the then the last thing we did was make an investment in a company called LCC24.com in Germany which is the online brand for Lufthansa City Center which is the largest independent travel agency in Germany with 1.6 billion Euros of sales operating out 400 shops in 300 cities.

TWST: Did you also acquire eXhilaration?

Mr. Howell: That was post year end and we did acquire eXhilaration. eXhilaration is a lifestyle company so if you want to go bungee jumping or you want to drive a Ferrari car or you want to drive a tank they can enable you to do all of those things.

TWST: So kind of high end market?

Mr. Howell: Yes, high end market we were the reseller of about 20 percent of their product and they fit well into our lifestyle brands and anything having to do with going out. All of these acquisitions are in four countries and in our core categories as I defined them earlier. We also have presence in Sweden, Netherlands, Belgium, Italy and France and we also have joint ventures in Japan, Australia, South Africa and Spain.