Apr 22nd 2000: Amid stock market turbulence, there were mixed results for ASPs making stock market debuts in Europe, Asia and America this week.

Netstore became the first pureplay ASP to begin trading on a European stock market on Wednesday (Apr 19th), joining the London Stock Exchange (LSE) listing as previously planned (ticker: NES). Having successfully completed a placement of around £40m ($63m) worth of shares with institutions a week before, trading began just above the placement price of 150p per share. Trading in a narrow range, the stock finished the week at a price of 152.5p, valuing the company at £135m ($212m).

It was a different story for e-commerce service provider Digitalhongkong.com, which joined Hong Kong's Growth Enterprise Market (GEM) on Monday. By Thursday, the spin-off from local technology group Champion Technology Holdings was under investigation by the territory's Securities and Futures Commission, due to unusual share price movements.

Against the backdrop of a 15.9 percent slide in the GEM index, Digitalhongkong surged 75 percent above its initial offering price. The company's shares continued to rise on the second day of trading, gaining 59.52 percent, but then dropped 10.45 percent on Wednesday and a further 16.67 percent Thursday to close at HK$2.50.

The company said it was unaware of any reasons for the unusual movements in the share price, but regulators were concerned that 97 percent of the new 25.2m shares went to six shareholders, while small investors received just 2,000 shares each. The shareholder structure was not disclosed until after the placement.

Most of the week's planned offerings by US companies were temporarily postponed in the wake of the precipitous drop and subsequent partial recovery in stock prices on the technology-rich Nasdaq market. The Nasdaq Composite index fell some 25 percent the week of 10th to 14th Apr, then immediately sprang back to recover almost half of those losses on Monday and Tuesday this week.

The most prominent postponement was the planned initial public offering (IPO) by search engine portal Alta Vista (ticker: ALTA). Another postponement was by online small business services portal Digitalwork.com (ticker: DWRK). Follow-on offerings by Breakaway Solutions (ticker: BWAY) and Navisite (ticker: NAVI) were also deferred.

Additional reporting from asia.internet.com

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