UK Edition
A £1.3bn Russian software company listed in London suffered a slide in its share price after accidentally revealing an acquisition early.
Softline, founded by the Russian entrepreneur Igor Borovikov in 1993, mistakenly put out a press release on Monday afternoon announcing that it had acquired a majority stake in technology education provider Academy IT.
In the statement, Softline's chief exeuctive Sergey Chernovolenko said: "We are excited to welcome Academy IT to the team. This deal creates a market leader in technology training and will help us improve our training capabilities in this booming sector."
However, an hour later a representative of the business said: "Please do not publish this story, it was accidentally sent out and has not been confirmed."
The company's London-listed depositary receipts ended the day down 7.7pc in the wake of the error.
After markets closed, spokesmen confirmed that the deal had gone ahead as planned.
The gaffe comes just months after the firm completed a $1.5bn (£1.1bn) London listing which left Mr Borovikov sitting on a fortune worth hundreds of millions of pounds.
In October it raised around $400m after issuing its shares at a final price of $7.50, the lower end of its planned range.
Softline said the takeover was in line with its plan to expand in the global education technology market, which is forecast to grow to $404bn (£297bn) by 2025.
The company was set up in Moscow as a software reseller with just 10 staff in 1993 after Mr Borovikov had completed a PhD in Mathematics. It now has 6,000 employees in more than 50 countries.