Shares in Amazon.com soared by 26% yesterday on speculation of a
strategic alliance agreement between it and retail giant Wal-Mart.
However, it is also recovering from an attack by hackers on a book
site it owns that exposed the personal data of around 98,000
customers.
According to a Sunday Times report, the anticipated deal would
make Amazon.com the e-commerce supplier for Wal-Mart, which is said
to be struggling on-line. Wal-Mart would gain access to
Amazon.com’s on-line sales management and home delivery system,
reputed to be one of the best in the world.
The range of Amazon.com’s products would substantially increase
and it would also get a presence in Wal-Mart’s 4,500 shops, a cash
injection, a percentage of off-line sales and the benefit of
Wal-Mart’s purchasing power.
Since the report by the Sunday Times the two companies have refused
to comment about the possibility of a partnership.
Investors are enthusiastic about the potential synergy in a deal
between the leading on-line and off-line retailers. In the past two
years, the market capitalisation of loss-making Amazon.com has
fallen from $36 billion to around $5 billion. Wal-Mart has a market
capitalisation of $216 billion.
Bibliofind.com, a book service owned by Amazon.com that links
buyers and sellers of rare books, discovered only last week that an
unidentified hacker had penetrated its servers in October last year
and continued since then to access site user data.
Customer records, including names, addresses and credit card
details, were accessed but the company does not know if or how the
data has been used by the hacker.
The company became aware of the attack only when “graffiti”
appeared on its site. It shut down its site on Friday and removed
the customer data from its servers. The FBI is looking into the
matter. Amazon.com’s customer database is not affected; only users
of the Bibliofind.com service are at risk, according to a
spokesperson.
