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Technology shares slide with Brexit vote, except ARM

Cambridge firm: Our earnings are outside EU

BREXIT Shares in British technology companies are mostly sliding after citizens of the United Kingdom voted for the nation to leave the European Union.

The FTSE 100 fell more than 8 per cent at opening this morning, slicing over £100bn off of the market capitalisation of the UK's most highly rated bluechips, although this has since risen to a still considerable 4.8 per cent drop.

As shares in mining businesses rise, likely due to the fluctuation in currency prices, those in British technology companies are mostly sliding - although their low openers are now picking up again - though they have not been as significantly hit as banks and property companies.

Meanwhile, the FTSE techMark 100 is generally down almost three per cent. The happy exception to the technology companies trend is ARM, which is barely up, but up, by roughly half a percentage point on the London Stock Exchange.

An ARM spokesperson told The Register that “Brexit will not have a significant impact on our business as almost all of our earnings come from outside the EU zone but we will watch the negotiations closely, particularly on the subject of visas, as we employ approximately 200 non-UK EU citizens at our Cambridge headquarters.”

They added: “We may lose some EU research grants but these have represented less than one percent of our R&D spend in the last three years and we hope to see this picked by the UK Government.”

Meanwhile, BT has slid by 8 per cent and Vodafone by 3.8 per cent, while Berkshire-based Micro Focus, the software and IT business, has dropped by more than four per cent.

Outsourcing business Crapita (comically called Capita by Private Eye) is down by more than nine per cent. Marlow-based infrastructure business Softcat is trading at more than 13 per cent less than it was previously, while payroll and accounting software firm Sage is down by two per cent. Faraday-cage flogging Laird went down by six per cent.

Nevertheless, some are saying that, in context, this is not the apocalypse.

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