1.5m Apex-Pal IPO shares snapped up online - in 3 minutes

DEMAND for stock exchange aspirant Apex-Pal's shares was so strong that all 1.5 million placement shares put up for sale online at ePublicOffer.com as part of its initial public offering (IPO) were snapped up within three minutes, leaving many investors disgruntled.

Irate investors alleged that the first-come-first-served system was flawed because it could not handle the surge in Internet traffic when the shares became available at 9am yesterday.

Apex-Pal, which operates cafes and restaurants including the Sakae Sushi chain, hopes to raise $3.4 million in the IPO which closes next Tuesday.

Some unhappy investors even went so far as to claim that the allocation on the investment portal - run by SBI-E2 Capital Securities - was grossly inadequate as genuine investors did not stand a chance at getting the shares.

But SBI-E2 chief executive Choo Chee Kong pooh-poohed the allegations and said that 'the 500 people who managed to get their three lots each were very happy'.

Part of the problem was that thousands of investors had logged in during the first 10 to 15 minutes and a slowdown was to be expected - no matter how well designed the portal was, he said.

At the peak, there were more than 1,500 hits in a single instant - even though the portal has only a few thousand members.

An Internet expert explained that each time a member refreshed his page, it was counted as a hit and the more impatient people got, the more times they tended to refresh the page, causing the computer server to slow down even further.

Mr Choo said that the apparent lack of Apex-Pal shares was partly due to the size of the issue and promised that there will be more shares available online for the next IPO in the pipeline - Cambodian casino operator NagaCorp.

The trick to getting online faster is simple, he said. Use broadband