MagicButton.net, a London based e-commerce technology provider, has become the 212th dot.com company to close its doors since the beginning of the year.

MagicButton, which was opened in 1999 and has offices in London and Germany, was forced into liquidation late last week.

The company's website was running as usual yesterday but, according to reports on netimperative.com, George Burdon, MagicButton's chief executive officer, said the firm had been forced into liquidation owing to "matters which we are unable to disclose".

No one at MagicButton was available to comment.

The news comes as webmergers.com, a San Francisco company, released a survey estimating at least 435 internet companies had folded since the beginning of last year. Nearly half of all the shutdowns from January 2000 have taken place in the last four months and the rate of companies failing accelerated last month, the company said.

At least 55 internet companies folded in April, making it the second "deadliest" month since January 200. In February there were 58 casualties, while in April last year "only one substantial dot.com folded", webmergers said.

The business-to-consumer sector was hardest hit, with 64% of closures coming from that area. That is slightly healthier than last year when 75% of dot.com failures were business-to-consumer companies.

E-commerce companies were most liable to failure in the past four months, accounting for 48% of the total, but the report also found internet access providers, online content sites and dot.com consultancies increasingly affected by the new-economy crash. Content sites made up 28% of casualties and access providers accounted for 10%.

The number and cost of mergers in the sector also fell: buyers spent almost $2.6bn to acquire 115 internet companies in April, compared with 143 acquisitions for $5bn in March.