Tadpole Technology Plc has announced a placing of 1.25m new shares at 201 pence a share to raise some ú2.5m before expenses. The Cambridge-based portable computer company’s shares jumped 20 pence to 232 pence at the news. The shares represent 5% of the current issued share capital, the maximum normally permitted before a company has to offer existing shareholders pre-emption rights. The placing was handled by Albert E Sharp. In a separate announcement, Tadpole said that it had received an order worth about ú1m to supply the latest version of the Sparcbook 3 to Dassault Electronique of France. Dassault Electronique is integrating the Sparcbook 3XP product into the NDE, a ruggedised notebook for use in defence information and industrial applications. Tadpole is also supplying over 120 P1000 100MHz Intel Corp Pentium-based notebook computers to US insurance company Nationwide Inc, in a contract said by Tadpole to be worth more than $1m.
