Lastminute.com founder Ms Martha Lane Fox has been seriously injured in a road accident in Morocco.
The 30-year-old businesswoman is reported to have had emergency surgery following the accident in the seaside tourist town of Essaouira, near Marrakesh.
Ms Lane Fox is said to have been on holiday with three friends when the accident happened early yesterday evening. No details about the crash have emerged, but it was reported that Ms Lane Fox was taken to a local hospital with suspected haemorrhaging.
Ms Lane Fox became the face of the dotcom boom of the late 1990s after co-founding the Lastminute.com Internet site.
In 2000, Ms Lane Fox boasted a paper fortune of £40 million but after the company's share price crashed, that was cut to £9 million. Now her stake in the company is valued at around £23 million.
Ms Lane Fox quit the day-to-day running of Lastminute.com last year, and was poised to become the new head of department store group Selfridges.