A management team has been appointed for Commerce One Middle East (C1ME), a regional provider of B2B e-commerce exchanges and portals, as it prepares to launch its online presence in October.

Dubai-based C1ME, chaired by Prince Mohammed al-Faisal, is currently negotiating for the establishment of joint ventures in 14 Middle East countries - Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Yemen, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Each of the joint ventures will have paid-in capital of around $10 million, though this is expected to vary according to the size of the markets they are operating within.

C1ME is aiming to take equity positions of between 20-40 per cent in each of the joint ventures. Details of partners are yet to be released, but it is understood that dominant banking institutions in Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are among the interested parties.

The C1ME affiliates will provide the software that will give companies access to the Commerce One Global Trading Web, the largest e-marketplace in the world. 'We offer companies the chance to make front-end savings - up to 70 per cent of transaction processing costs can be saved, to reduce the direct costs of purchases and to generate fresh revenues by hosting the software on portals, ' says a C1ME official.

C1ME was launched in February and has among its shareholders Saudi Arabia's Al-Faisaliah Group, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Jordan's Aramex and Kuwait's The International Investor (TII). The latter is also acting as financial adviser to the company (MEED 3:3:00).