Robert Dighero, chief financial officer at Tradus, says the low point for QXL Ricardo, as it has been known for most of its life, came when its value crashed from a dotcom bubble high of £1.9bn ($3.8bn) to just £920,000 in July 2003.

“From an investor perspective, no one was interested,” he recalled. “When our market cap was so low, we were below everybody’s radar screen. It wasn’t a question of nobody calling back – there was nobody to call!”