Last week's placing of 43 million Parthus shares by Goldman Sachs is a real "glass half-full or half-empty" story.

The half-full brigade will say the placing removes a hefty overhang, was heavily oversubscribed and brings new investors to the shareholder list. The half-empty people will say that, at a price of 401/2p, it would have been a disaster if the placing was not oversubscribed. And if a long-time shareholder like Goldman Sachs thinks it's time to dump 7.5 per cent of Parthus then that's a pretty negative sign.

It's hard to see too much positive for Parthus in the short-term and as ABN Amro's Pat O'Sullivan Greene put it: "Sentiment and technical issues rather than fundamentals drive the price and we continue to believe that newsflow over the remainder of the year will not be sufficient to drive the share price further in 2001."