More jobs go as Buy.com looks for buyer

The company said it had already signed a letter of intent with a 'European entity' for the sale of its share of the UK operations. Buy.com UK is held in a complex structure as a joint venture between Buy.com and eVentures, which is a subsidiary of ePartners, a venture capital company owned by Softbank and News Corporation.

A Buy.com UK spokesman refused to comment on the subject and all other owners are referring questions to Buy.com UK. The spokesman said that in December the UK operation had 70,000 unique repeat customers, 40 per cent of which were SMEs, and was adding 3,000 a week. The average purchase was £100.

Sean Corbett, CEO of UK group-buying site Grouptrade, said: "With those figures the company should be profitable. They don't seem to do much advertising so they must have costs under control."

In the US, Buy.com's sales dropped two per cent to $196.7m for the year and losses hit $97.9m. It announced that it would cut 25 staff and also shut or sell its Canadian and Australian operation. It will be slashing its marketing and expects revenue to fall at least 25 per cent in the coming year.

Buy.com has cash reserves of $67.4m.