NeP4B (Networked Peers for Business) is a three year FIRB National research project aiming at implementing a new vision of the global market using innovative ICT solutions for small and medium enterprises (SME), by developing an advanced technological infrastructure to enable companies of any nature, size and geographic location to search for partners, negotiate and collaborate without limitations and constraints. The infrastructure will base on independent and interoperable semantic peers who behave as nodes of a virtual network. The project vision is towards an Internet-based structured marketplace where companies can access the huge amount of information already present in vertical portals and corporate databases and use it for dynamic, value-adding collaboration purposes. The project will develop a new type of search engine that will be able to facilitate the exchanges of information, the knowledge and the negotiations between company and company. With this new type of "specialized" search engine, we will have on-line one single electronic platform for the trade. The role of our research group is to develop techniques for automatic information extraction from participating companies" Web sites, and P2P routing mechanisms to support distributed complex queries.