James Wellesley Wesley, Head of UK ECM at Robert W Baird, said, "Ian's award is very well deserved. Technology is a key sector for Baird and we are committed to growing our business further in this field as well as strengthening the specialisation we have built in small and mid-cap stocks in the UK and US. During 2004, Baird's corporate client base has increased by over 40% including recent client gains of technology companies such as The Innovation Group (market capitalisation: £150m) and K3 Business Technology Group (market capitalisation: £25m)."
Ian Spence rejoined Baird in May 2001 having previously worked with the firm from 1994-1998. During that time, Ian was a founder member of the Baird technology research team in the UK and published Megabuyte, the first regular equity research publication dedicated to the UK software & IT services sector. Prior to rejoining Baird, Ian had been an independent IT research consultant, specialising in the European e-services sector and before that was a senior analyst with Richard Holway Ltd. Ian's City experience also includes time as an associate director with WestLB Panmure where he was responsible for the European IT services research team. Stocks followed by Ian include:
Alphameric
Anite Group
Axon Group
CODAScisys
Detica
EasyScreen*
Innovation Group* - research dated 23 Nov 04 available upon request
Intec Telecom*
ISOFT
K3 Business Technology Group* - research dated 26 Nov 04 available upon request
Northgate Information
PlusNet*
SurfControl
Systems Union
Vega Group*
XKO Group*
In the last couple of weeks Baird has expanded its technology equity research team with the appointment of Paddy Carter who was previously a Companies writer at Investors Chronicle magazine. Dan Ridsdale also joined Baird's technology team in 2004 to drive the group's coverage of communications technology and service providers. Dan was previously at Nomura. Stocks followed by Dan include:
Imagination Technologies
TTP Communications
Wolfson Microelectronics
CSR
Filtronic
Spirent
Superscape
Zetex
*Baird acts as broker and financial adviser
