For the following year, they have pencilled in pounds 30.7m.Mr O’Connor said investors were likely to be cautious. The US market moved quickly but they should really be a lot closer to their customers.”Micro Focus shares fell 8.5p to 117.5p. In the US, companies have largely finished dealing with the problem and are now testing their systems to see whether they will work when the date changes.However, Micro Focus only launched its millennium testing solutions in November, leading to a sudden drop in demand as customers waited for the new products to arrive. Millennium products currently account for about 20 per cent of Micro Focus’s turnover.George O’Connor, information technology analyst at Granville, the investment bank, said: “Micro Focus have been caught napping.

“This reflects the results of the previous quarter and concerns about the company’s future,” he said.The shake-up follows a disastrous few months for Micro Focus culminating in a profit warning last month. Mr Greenfield said Micro Focus had not moved fast enough to integrate Intersolv into its operations “We haven’t done our job,” Mr Greenfield said. “We’ve been slow in getting off the ground and we want to accelerate that process.”Mr Waters is the second chief executive to leave Micro Focus in two years. The company also took a $49.7m charge related to the merger with Intersolv which pulled it into the red.Mr Waters will receive compensation for loss of office, even though he is staying on the board as a non-executive director. However, Micro Focus refused to discuss the size of the payout. In the three months to September, operating profits slumped to just $99,000 compared with $10.6m in the same period last year. THE CHIEF executive of Micro Focus resigned yesterday after the software group plunged into the red in the third quarter of the year.

Martin Waters, who has been in the job less than two years, is giving up his executive responsibilities. They voted for Merrill Lynch as best for research, Fidelity Investments as the top fund management group and Goldman Sachs as the best investment bank.. Most striking in the survey was that not a single locally-based stock broker managed to score a place in the survey’s rating of top performers.Fund managers chose the Hong Kong-based CLSA economics and strategy team as the best sector analysts. Warburg Dillon Read won the overall best broker research award, Merrill Lynch took the top prize for best broker sales and ABN Amro gained top rating for best broker execution.Interestingly, the large companies interviewed for the survey produced a different set of assessments of their top broking companies.