The backlash against internet and hi-tech stocks claimed another high profile victim yesterday when the Japanese electronics group Fujitsu abandoned plans for the £5bn stock market flotation of its British subsidiary ICL.
Keith Todd, ICL's chief executive, has resigned after insisting for the past two years that the business would refloat in 2000 come what may.
Mr Todd ended a 13-year association with the company on Friday by clearing his desk after the Fujitsu-dominated ICL board decided to postpone the flotation "indefinitely".
"In the light of Keith Todd's close identification with the flotation of ICL, he had tendered his resignation as chief executive," a statement from ICL said.
ICL would have been one of the stock market's largest listed technology companies but now finds itself placed amid a growing band of hi-tech businesses suffering as a result of the sharp turn in investors' sentiment.
As recently as May Mr Todd was maintaining that the flotation of ICL would go ahead and that "substantive" businesses would not be affected by the market correction.
A statement from Fujitsu said the decision to suspend the flotation indefinitely had been taken "in the light of current difficult trading conditions in the IT industry and the company's financial performance".
It is thought that ICL insiders have been disappointed by the relatively static revenue growth and widening losses, despite a reduction in staff numbers.
The planned summer flotations of two subsidiary businesses have also been delayed, while the IT services sector has been hit by a wave of profit warnings.
A Y2K-related slowdown in business had taken longer than anticipated to recede, a spokesman added.
"The board felt that a flotation would be a distraction from the more important task at hand of building sustained growth and' profitability." UBS Warburg was ready to underwrite the issue in the fourth quarter of this year.
ICL in April announced costly plans to transform the company into one focused on e-business - just a month after the sea change in attitudes to the internet.
The plans involved ICL altering the focus of its core business from the manufacture of computers and hard ware, and retraining its entire 22,000 strong workforce in e-business skills.
Despite yesterday's setback ICL said it was still considering the £1bn flotation of its Nordic company ICL Invia on the Helsinki exchange. It might also still seek a listing in London for Knowledgepool, its e-learning business.
Analysts believe ICL could now be forced to mount a radical disposal programme to unlock "hidden value" and give individual divisions greater autonomy.
"We hope that Fujitsu will belatedly realise this," said Richard Holway of Holway Research. "If they retain the status quo - as they have done for so many years - they will just preside over a slowly dying offspring. Surely no parent wants to see that?" Guardian IT and Technology plc have already been successfully spun-out of ICL.
Mr Todd is temporarily replaced in his £600,000 a year job by Richard Christou, commercial and legal affairs director.
ICL said the search for a full-time replacement was under way. Mr Todd was promoted from finance director to chief executive five years ago when then chief executive Peter Bonfield was poached to take the top job at BT.
Keith Todd may have found it a tough task transforming ICL from lumbering computer hardware manufacturer into nimble e-business group but some things have got faster within one of Britain's largest technology companies.
By lunchtime yesterday Mr Todd's 13 years of service with the group had been consigned to history and the management team section on ICL's lavish corporate website made no reference to him.
Mr Todd, an accountant by training, began his career with the Royal Ordnance Factories.
He joined ICL as finance director in August 1987, having held a similar position at Marconi. Before that Mr Todd spent five years as chief financial officer of Cincinnati Electronics in the US.
When Peter Bonfield left ICL in 1995 to become chief executive of BT, Mr Todd stepped up to take the top job.
One of the tasks that has tested Mr Todd most is the on-off £1bn Horizon project to install touch-screen computer technology in 19,000 Post Office outlets nationwide. It has been hampered by the government changing its mind about what kind of system is wanted. It is due for completion in spring 2001, giving the Post Office Europe's largest secure retail/banking computer network.
Since 1998 the well-liked boss has been promising that ICL would be floated on the stock exchange by the end of 2000.
When parent company Fujitsu decided that ICL was not ready to float it was inevitable that Mr Todd would go.
He will also resign from the board of lottery operator Camelot Group, where he is ICL's representative.
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