The chairman of one of Bradford's biggest companies has urged financial markets to rethink their approach to hi-tech firms in the wake of plummeting share prices.

Professor David Rhodes, chairman of Saltaire-based Filtronic, has seen his company's share price dip from 1,887.5p at the beginning of last April to 171p yesterday.

And he warned that although the price did not reflect the business' strength, it was in danger of limiting the amount of capital it could raise for future expansion. The firm is one of scores in the technology sector listed on the UK stock markets which have seen their value nose dive after a drop in investor confidence.

Pace, another Shipley company at the forefront of Bradford's growth, has fared better but still seen its share price take a battering, dropping from 931p at the start of April last year to 334p yesterday.

Filtronic employs about 3,500 people worldwide and almost a third of those work in the Bradford area.

Prof Rhodes said: "The company is stronger than the share price indicates and most of our major customers are still growing.

"One of the difficulties with us is that we manufacture a lot of products as well, but the markets treat all technology companies the same.

"That does affect our ability to raise capital and curtails what we can do."

The hard times experienced in the sector were highlighted yesterday when telecoms equipment group Marconi, which competes in several markets against Filtronic, announced it was to axe 3,000 jobs, half of them in the UK.

A stock market analyst predicted Filtronic, rated in January's Telegraph & Argus survey as Bradford's 16th biggest company, would survive as a niche operator but had suffered along with the rest of the market from extreme actions and reactions.

Ramsay Fenton, senior divisional director of Bradford stockbrokers Hill Osborne, said: "This is certainly a long term problem.

"It's a story of huge investment in a fashionable area which saw prices pushed up to tremendous levels, and then reality descended.

"The sector has been the victim of extreme reactions, first with the inward investment and then the panic but by the autumn the picture should clearer."

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