TeleBermuda International's parent company GlobeNet is set to raise $250 million through a private offering in the US and Canada of its common shares.

And TBI general manager James Fitzgerald said the offering was another step to position Bermuda as a global telecommunications and e-commerce hub.

He said Bermuda-based GlobeNet (GLOCOM on the BSX) would use the proceeds to develop its Atlantica-1 Project -- a massive undersea fibre-optic cable linking the US, Bermuda, Brazil and Venezuela.

Funds raised by the private offering would be GlobeNet's first step to securing finance to "enable an influx of e-commerce and or telecommunications between South America and North America via Bermuda,'' he said.

"This is the next step to allow companies in South America to have access to better long-distance telecommunications facilities.

"Historically the traffic has been from east to west from Europe to North America and from North America to Europe but several hundred million people live in South America.

"They have seen a virtual explosion in telecommunications there with the number of people and businesses using fax machines, the Internet etc.

"And this will fill the demand for high bandwidth, competitively priced telecommunications. GlobeNet is going to provide new city-to-city international services.

"These will be wholesale available to telephone companies and wireless companies who will buy the right to use our undersea fibre-optic cable.'' He said the recent boom with different global telecommunications competing to build such cables was "a bit of a race'' but there was enough demand for several such networks.

The quarter of a billion dollar offering began on Tuesday and is expected to finish on June 15.

The share offering is to be made by private placement solely to qualified investors in the US and Canada in reliance on exemptions from registration and prospectus requirements under securities laws in those countries.

The securities to be offered have not been and will not be registered under the United States Securities Act of 1933 or qualified by prospectus under applicable Canadian securities laws.

GlobeNet, through TBI, already provides a full range of international telecommunications services in Bermuda through its undersea fibre-optic cable system links to the US.

And the company carries over a third of all traffic generated in Bermuda.

The offering was announced on the tail of the release earlier this week of the company's results for its first full year of operation.

The balance sheet showed revenue for the whole year of 1998 was $26.72, an increase of $21.76 million on the $4.91 million revenue achieved from GlobeNet's set-up in May 1997 to the end of that year.

But the company is still in the red although the figures showed net loss for 1998 dropped to $4.92 million from $5.29 million the previous year.