By James Langton

(November 6 – 17:30 ET) – BayStreetDirect.com Inc., the firm that offers small investors a crack at hot IPOs, is now offering investors a private placement of its own shares.

The offering is in the form of special warrants to qualified investors in the exempt market. BayStreetDirect.com is offering up to 1 million shares in the form of warrants at a sale price of $5 per warrant on a “private placement” basis. The last closing date for the offering is November 30.

The deal is being sold under offering memorandum to registered members of BayStreetDirect.com. This offering is being sold directly by the firm, which has not retained an agent to sell it, but may pay a selling commission of up to 6% to registered dealers. No selling commission will be paid to employees or affiliates of BayStreetDirect.com.

Minimum subscription amounts for the offering vary by local securities requirements. Securities legislation in Ontario, Alberta and PEI also allows the firm to make the offering available to those who qualify as “sophisticated purchasers”.

BayStreetDirect.com is an Internet financial services firm offering securities in public offerings primarily to retail investors. It matches early stage companies in need of capital with high net worth and institutional investors.

The firm is in the process of testing a subscription-based service that packages and resells the trading activity of professional money managers, the ProTraderAlert service. The company plans to launch the service this fall.

The offering memorandum reveals that the firm hopes to have 50,000 members signed up by the end of this year. For 2001, BayStreetDirect plans an IPO of its own, while expanding into U.S., European and Asian markets.

In the six months ended June 30, the firm lost almost $2.2 million. While it earned $540,411 in investment banking fees in the period, it spent more than $1.3 million in compensation and benefits, more than $500,000 in general and administrative expenses, and almost $480,000 in business development and member acquisition.