Last year's deluge of initial public offerings in Europe's technology markets slowed to a trickle during the first quarter of this year. The wave of expected deals postponed from late last year has failed to materialise.

Although bankers say that the technology market is not completely closed and that there is still a place for good companies, the IPO statistics do not paint a very encouraging picture. In the US, only 17 companies came to the market in the first quarter, while 78 withdrew their IPOs, according to the website IPO.com. Meanwhile, technology markets in Germany, the UK, France and Italy saw only 10 floats in the last three months.