Ten months after its successful floatation on New York's Nasdaq market, the Irish software company Iona Technologies is to list on the Dublin stock exchange. The firm believes the move will broaden its investor base, and could encourage other technology companies to move onto the Irish market. A spokesman for the company said at the weekend that he expected to see Iona listed on the Dublin stock market by the end of the year. In March, the company floated on the Nasdaq in a move that valued it at over £170 million.
Iona is being advised on the move, and in particular the various regulations that govern the two exchanges, by Mr Brian O'Kelly of Goodbody Corporate Finance.
"The Irish Stock Exchange has been working hard, together with Goodbody's and other brokers to create a framework which will enable companies like Iona to obtain an Irish listing, and therefore become more accessible to Irish investors," Mr O'Kelly said last night.
It is understood that several differences in regulations that exist between the Irish Stock Exchange and the Nasdaq have now been resolved, and that the company is now preparing its documentation for an Irish listing. This will occur within a month or six weeks, sources say.
An Irish listing would be attractive to the company, analysts say, because of the type of investor it could attract. A significant number of players on the Nasdaq are "momentum investors", who typically gamble on new companies for a few years before selling when the price reaches a certain level, and moving on to the next hot stock.
The Irish market tends to attract more long-term, institutional investors.
Observers say Iona would now like to broaden its base, allowing more of these longer-term investors on board. Because a significant amount of trade in Ireland and Britain is "index-driven" - where investors consider carefully all of the companies that make up a certain proportion of the market as a whole - Iona's mere presence may also encourage demand.
"We believe that the visibility of an Irish quote, together with Iona's inclusion in the ISEQ index, will broaden investor interest further," Mr O'Kelly said.
The move may also encourage several Irish companies, currently listed on the Nasdaq, to follow suit. The chairman of the highlysuccessful software firm CBT, Mr Bill McCabe, has said several times that he would consider a Dublin listing.
Other Nasdaq firms that may also be considering Dublin include Trinity Biotech and Phoenix Shannon.
"We are optimistic that other Irish technology companies will be watching Iona's move with great interest," Mr O'Kelly said.
Iona, based in Dublin and with offices in the United States and Australia, makes the world's most popular Object Request Broker Middleware. This is software that allows engineers to use different components from other software to design programmes.
According to Mr Horn, the company's chief executive, Iona controls 60 per cent of the world market for the software. In an interview earlier this year, he said that because demand was tripling every year, Iona had to match this rate of growth just to maintain its market share.
The company was formed in 1991 under the umbrella of Trinity College Dublin, with just three employees.
