Europe's biggest software maker SAP said it planned to convert its widely traded preference shares into ordinary shares, simplifying its share structure and making the stock more attractive to international investors.

SAP's normally little-traded ordinary shares, which have voting rights, leapt 25 per cent at the news. In late trading they were #168.50, with 5 million shares changing hands.

The preference shares, the ones normally quoted on this page, were slightly higher at #172.15. SAP said it would propose a one-for-one conversion at its annual general meeting on May 3rd.

The ordinary shares, 63 per cent of which were held by SAP's founders, had been trading at a discount of about 30 per cent to preference shares due to their lower liquidity.

Stock market index compilers have been urging companies to standardise shares in this way in order to make indices more transparent and accurate.

It was a day of retrenchment for telecom shares. Sonera fell 5.7 per cent, Deutsche Telekom 2.9 per cent and BT 4.8 per cent.

One of the worst performers was France Telecom, which fell 6.6 per cent to #64.70. Its poor performance was driven by news that Vodafone had sold 114 million France Telecom shares back to the company. Vodafone also said that France Telecom was going to repay a #2.15 billion loan note plus interest on March 13th.

Media companies were mostly lower, with Dutch publisher VNU down 4.3 per cent to #46.10 and cable group UPC off 1.7 per cent at #11.43.