Finextra50 plunges 6.12% led by Vasco and S1

The Finextra50 Financial Technology Index closed last week down to 85.65 as markets worldwide, particularly Nasdaq tech stocks, took a beating. Vasco Data Security and S1 saw the biggest falls, while Temenos pared back a big drop earlier in the week as acquisition rumours circulated on Friday. The week's only significant gainers were Gresham Computing, Chordiant Software and Broadridge.

Major gainers
Only three companies saw a more than 2% share price increase last week. Gresham Computing was by far the index's biggest gainer as it rose a further 10.84% to close Friday at 79.25p. The company is seeing positive sentiment on the back of its upbeat trading forecast at the start of the year. But the company has a long way to go to make up for its falls over the last six months of 2007. Gresham shares are down 39.15% since the Finextra50 was benchmarked last May.

Chordiant Software also saw an increase last week, rising 4.19% to $8.20. The US provider of customer experience management software to the financial and other sectors announced its biggest ever contract in early January - a $26.1m deal with UK telco Vodafone.

Broadridge Financial Solutions also finished stronger last week, rising 3.43% on the previous week to $23.52.

Major losers
86% of index constituents fell last week, and 14 of them fell by more than 10%.
The biggest loser was Vasco Data Security, which has been a particularly volatile stock over the past year. It ended Friday down 16.09% for the week at $20.80.

Swiss core banking system vendor Temenos would have been the week's biggest loser but for a rally on Friday, as it launched a share buyback program and traders cited rumours of a takeover bid from Germany's SAP. T

Temenos said it had started its 2008 share buyback and had so far bought 15.9 percent of the total amount approved at an average price of 23.94 francs.

The company had been as low as Chf22.6 on Thursday (down 16.2% on the previous week close), but ended Friday down 12.96% on the previous week to close at CHf23.50.

Indian outsourcing specialists were also down more than the average last week, driven by Indian tech giant Infosys missing analysts expectations with its third quarter revenues. Infosys is often seen as a benchmark stock for this sector. While its third quarter revenues rose to $1.084 billion from $821 million last year, this came in below the Wall Street forecast of $1.09 billion.

As a result, India-listed Firstsource was down 13.38% to Rs69.90, while the larger US-listed Cognizant was down 12.55% to $27.11.

Other companies to see significant falls include: