Getting smart

When it rain it pours, they say. But nobody thought Gemplus would get quite so drenched after its initial public offering on both Euronext and Nasdaq in December 2000. After all, the Franco-American smart card maker was one of the darlings of the tech bubble era and fully expected be worth over $7 bn by 2005.But the forecasts were wrong. Despite initial share price increases, it soon became clear the timing was off and the telecoms industry was plummeting. Like most other tech firms, Gemplus