We're not a Procter & Gamble - one hundred years old - or a General Motors - 125 years old, or whatever it is But we are multi-business businesses like they are. To think that all of our businesses, all in these new areas, are going to appear to anyone looking in as relating to each other in a long-term strategic way is just foolishness," says Mr Diller. At a time when his old friend and foe is bowing out of full-time powerbroking, Mr Diller could not be busier. Last month he split his company, IAC Interactive Corp, into two, making its internet travel site, Expedia , into a separate entity. Mr Diller is now chairman of both Expedia, the world's largest online travel business, and of the other company, which has retained the IAC name. Its holdings range from Ticketmaster, to the Home Shopping Network on television to the latest major acquisition, Ask Jeeves, which is in the process of being rebranded, possibly to Ask. Mr Diller, who is tall and lean and originally hails from Beverly Hills, where he started work in the postroom of the famous Hollywood talent agency, William Morris, notes wryly: "Mr career is getting to be endless".

He seems to relish the challenges presented by the fact that he deserted the world of old media nine years ago - reportedly after tensions at Fox with Mr Murdoch - to create through acquisitions an internet and direct retailing empire. He concedes that those challenges include getting investors to understand IAC's particularly complex business model "We are very young at this. The forty years since then have included several spectacular bust-ups and periods of not talking between the two. However, particularly recently, relations seem to have become more cordial and Mr Eisner chose Mr Diller along with John Travolta as his interviewees when he last week appeared as the guest host on the Charlie Rose show, a popular TV chatshow "Michael's just more competitive than I am I made my way and he made his. We've both, as they say, done alright," is Mr Diller's pronouncement. According to Mr Eisner, he and Mr Diller were like "two little tigers" when they worked together at ABC's television network in their twenties, where Mr Diller had the senior role. "I really don't like competition, though many of my colleagues do.

It doesn't interest me," says Mr Diller, who is one of America's richest men and whose career has included running Paramount Pictures and turning Fox into a viable forth TV network in the US for its majority owner Rupert Murdoch. No one might find 63-year-old Mr Diller's serene stance more unexpected than Michael Eisner, Disney's larger-than-life chief executive who stepped down at the beginning of this month. It is a good wheeze and ought to attract more interest in the core Ofex market, too. With its financial worries behind it, Plus Markets is a buy.. It might be surprising to learn that Barry Diller, the famously fierce Hollywood mogul turned internet executive, does not get a thrill from the cut and thrust of competition. Now renamed Plus Markets, the shares exchange is going places again, and investors with an appetite for risk should join the list of City names to put their money behind Mr Brickles and the new Plus Markets strategy.Plus is creating a second market for small companies already listed on the LSE. What is the point of that? Well, the LSE has recently switched some small stocks to an electronic trading system that has not gone down well with old-fashioned brokers, who want to deal personally with a market maker Trading on Plus will also be cheaper. This independent stock market for small companies nearly went bust last year as new and existing stocks preferred to list on AIM.