MarchFirst

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MarchFirst (in the company's own spelling, marchFIRST) was a short-lived international systems integrator and internet consulting company at the tail end of the dot-com boom. MarchFirst was a Nasdaq traded public company whose peak stock price reached $52. By the time the company filed for bankruptcy, it traded for pennies ($0.16 on March 28, 2001).

The widely-panned name referred to the March 1, 2000 merger of Whittman-Hart, a respected systems integrator employing thousands of consultants in the U.S, Canada, and Europe, and US Web/CKS, a company formed during the 1990s by accretion of numerous local or regional Internet and web design consultancies. The CEO was Bob Bernard of Whittman-Hart.

The merger was considered problematic by many observers, with a clash between the button-down culture of Whittman-Hart and the business casual culture of USWeb inevitable. By late 2000, despite aggressive moves by Bernard, including the acquisition of management consultancy Mitchell Madison, the problems became public, with the stock price dropping 60% in one day on October 24, 2000. Despite a $150 million cash infusion by Francisco Partners in December, the company folded in early 2001. On March 13, 2001 the company leadership around Bernard resigned, and on April 12, 2001, the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection. In May 2001, the company was dissolved and the marchFIRST brand was retired.

Avenue A/Razorfish acquired several offices, Divine many of the Midwest offices, and others were sold individually. The international offices in Hamburg, Germany were acquired by Divine and those in Oslo by the Scandinavian Itera Consulting Group.

Bernard later reacquired a reduced part of the company and it was reconstituted as Whittman-Hart. Bernard died in 2007.

[edit] Timeline

US Web was founded in 1995 by a group of former Novell executives (Joe Firmage, Toby Corey, and Sheldon Laube)
US Web went public with an IPO in 1997
US Web agreed to buy another Internet marketing company, CKS Group, in a stock transaction in September 1998
US Web/CKS and Whittman-Hart merged in March 2000 to form marchFIRST, Inc.
Bernard resigned in March, and MarchFirst went bankrupt in April 2001
Two companies (Avenue A/Razorfish and Divine) acquired several offices in April 2001
US Web and Whittman-Hart, survived the breakup and re-emerged as separate companies
US Web is currently an Internet services firm with offices in New York, Arizona and California (Orange County)
Divine purchased several companies that struggled after the dot com bust, including MarchFirst
Divine went bankrupt in Feb 2003 (in April 2003, divine's assets were sold at auction)