Marconi offers good news... and bad

NEWS Marconi is showing the first positive signs of making inroads into its massive debts with the sale of property worth £67m. Marconi plans to raise £500m through disposals by March 2002 and having attained almost 15 per cent of that sum already will provide some cause for optimism among analysts ahead of the company announcing first half results tomorrow. Optimism is likely to be tempered however by news that Marconi is losing key market share to its rivals as well as analysts' fears that the fourth quarter is likely to show little reward for the troubled company as demand continues to fall in Europe. Marconi is reported to have lost vital ground in the SDH market - the technology which controls the flow of data over a phone network and which makes up a quarter of Marconi's sales. According to the Independent, French telecoms equipment maker Alcatel has taken the most serious bite out of Marconi's market share.