allbusiness was cofounded in 1999 by san francisco lawyer richard harroch, keith belling, and jerry engel. harroch served as the company's chairman, belling as ceo, and engel as chief financial officer. within a year, allbusiness grew to more than 100 employees and the company hired teymour boutros-ghali (a nephew of former un secretary general boutros boutros-ghali) as ceo and belling moved to the position of president. it was acquired by nbci, the internet venture of nbc, a subsidiary of general electric, in march 2000 for $225 million usd. at the time, it was one of the largest purchases of a dot-com company. nbci merged allbusiness with an independent internet company, bigvine.com, in november 2000 and the combined entity assumed the name allbusiness.