Mr. Rohan, from Wit Capital, said Web sites were justifiably concerned about being able to continue gathering demographic information.

Jonathan Cohen, research director of Wit Capital, praises the willingness of investors to look beyond the price-to-earnings multiple.

Energized, Mr. Klein founded Wit Capital in April 1996 as "the first online investment banking firm."

Wit Capital, in contrast, recently sprang from one of Wall Street's more ill-fated and short-lived crazes, the fever for publicly traded microbreweries.

Wit Capital is also planning to start an after-hours, Internet-based market for stock trading.

Wit Capital - they're just closing business left and right.

Wit Capital plans to issue stock worth $328 million to the shareholders of E*Offering.

Wit Capital, an Internet-based brokerage and investment banking firm, has said it plans to offer a similar, private trading network for extended-hours dealing this summer.

In late 1999 the agreement with Wit Capital (described below) was struck.

Wit Capital had been founded just a few years earlier, in 1996, by Andrew Klein.