Morning Edition: boo.com's back, StepStone burns off some pounds and telecoms trickery

NEWS Boo.com became a by-word for new media excess as a champagne lifestyle failed to hide the fact that very few people were buying its products. The company went under but is now being re-born after US fashionmall.com paid £250,000 for the brand. The woman charged with making boo.com work the second time around is 39 year-old American, Kate Buggeln. She believes that far from being tainted, the boo brand is a major asset. And as if the last six months had never happened, the optimistic Buggeln adds: "We have a very long-term view about this. We're not trying to take over the world in a year, we're trying to take over the world in a series of years." Talking of economic sobriety, Giles Clarke - the millionaire entrepreneur behind StepStone - has promised to stop spending money. Well almost. According to a report in The Times, Clarke's online recruitment firm managed to burn through £16.8m in the three months to the end of September. Expansion into five European countries has left the company a little short of money and the share price at 157 1/2p, down from its issue price of 241p. The Financial Times chooses to ignore dot-coms for a day, and instead concentrates on a strange case of telecoms 'copy cat'. If you were paying attention you will remember yesterday featured some strange goings on over 3G licences and a very large US telco promising to undertake some drastic surgery. Well, it's happened again. For yesterday's Italian fiasco, read today's decision by the Spanish government to cash in on a good thing by increasing the price of UMTS licences 30-fold. This, despite the fact that all four licences were issued back in March. Nothing to do with the crazy windfalls created in the UK and elsewhere. Honest And while AT&T comes to terms with its third de-merger in 20 years, relative newcomer Worldcom is seeking to split its long-distance operations from the rest of its business. As the FT notes, this is a major reversal of Bernie Ebbers frantic, but not unimpressive, takeover strategy of the last three years.