Samir Naji says he's delighted with the way the Horizon flotation went and broker NCB says it is delighted at the reaction in the market, but Current Account can only conclude that this flotation was seriously underpriced.

Quitee frankly, with such a meagre amount of shares being released to the market and the resulting shortage of stock, and with techie shares (and Horizon is essentially a techie share despite its distribution business) going through the roof, selling shares on a forward earnings multiple of around 15 seems odd to say the least.

Of course, since Horizon was not raising any new money in the flotation it doesn't really matter what price the shares were floated at. If Samir Naji and Charles Garvey are content to sell shares at such a massive discount to what the market believes they are worth, then that's their business.

It certainly keeps the institutions, who bought shares in the private placing last year and from Messrs Naji and Garvey in the flotation, sweet. It certainly keeps Horizon's 260odd staff very sweet as all those employees who bought shares in the flotation are sitting on a handsome paper profit.

Some believe that there lies the reason for the apparent generosity of Samir Naji and Charles Garvey in selling shares to staff at what seems a knockdown price. The Horizon boss and his lieutenant know full well that skilled techie staff are mobile and if they believe their company is being mean, they can walk. Equity and share options are where it's at if you want to motivate staff.

And for the record, the actual gains by the staff are far bigger than Current Account first thought. A closer look at the prospectus shows that the staff were given the opportunity to buy more than 876,000 shares at the €1.64 flotation price, not the 306,860 shares that was initially thought. Those 306,860 are new shares being sold by Horizon (the only actual cash raised by Horizon in the offer) with 569,240 shares being sold to staff by Messrs Naji and Garvey.

So the staff paid €1.4 million (£1.1 million) for their shares and those shares are now worth €3.3 million (£2.6 million). Add in the 1.5 million shares the staff got in an ESOP a year ago at 50p (63 cents) a share, and there are plenty reasons to smile.