will it survive the weekend, page-8

Close, but not quite:-

Titanic Trophy for Floats

A hotly contested award.

1. Rendell Industries. This 1986 float had the impeccable lineage of being promoted by a subsidiary of Commonwealth Bank of Australia and underwritten by Bache Cortis Carr, which was then headed by Rupert Murdoch's brother-in-law. Rendell, a construction company that specialised in ceilings, listed on the second board on June 27, 1986. Trading was suspended on July 23 and a receiver appointed on August 13. Its entire listed life was therefore just 25 trading days. Readers who took a winter holiday that year could have missed its entire life.

2. Mobi Tow. This company (whose founders included Dean Scook) with a car-towing device issued a prospectus in November 1987 that raised $2 million. The shares were listed in March 1988. They were suspended in May 1988 and a receiver appointed. The receiver, Tony Douglas-Brown, discovered it had a deficiency of $2.4 million.

3. Games 'R' Us. Raised $3 million, listed in October 2000, and went into administration in February 2001.

[http://pierpont.com.au/arch_view.asp?id=4526]