Trading at almost a two-year low, the last thing that Fran Rooney needed was a brokers' note suggesting that Baltimore shares were heading further south. It's fair to say that Jonathan Crozier, the WestLB Panmure analyst who slapped his 170p sterling price target on Baltimore shares is not going to feature on Fran's Christmas card list.
Mr Crozier may be wrong in his assessment of Baltimore, but the company also has to take a look at itself and work out how the market suddenly got into its head that 27 million shares held by Content Technology shareholders were about to be dumped unceremoniously on the market after the supposed expiry of a lock-up agreement.
It took until mid-afternoon the following day before Baltimore found itself able to issue a statement to the market clarifying the situation. Yes, the Content lock-up partly expires next week but only in respect of 1.4 per cent of Baltimore shares held by one former Content shareholder. And the next expiry of the lock-up does not expire until April 25th when a further 2.2 per cent of Baltimore shares can be sold. Better communication needed, boys!
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