Detailing for the first time the 181 members of the two techMARK indices, kicked into life on November 4, the LSE said the move was part of a long-term drive to support fast-growing firms in areas such as IT, telecoms and drugs.

"It brings a new dimension to the relationship between companies and investors, giving innovative technology companies greater visibility...and enabling investors to identify technology companies with ease," said LSE chief executive Gavin Casey.

Having seen its strength in technology stocks overshadowed by high-profile rivals such as the US Nasdaq and Germany's Neuer Markt, the LSE has set up techMARK as a way of regaining the initiative.

Unlike Nasdaq and Neuer Markt, techMARK is not a separate market, though the LSE has ushered in some new listing rules designed to allow young companies to float despite lacking the traditional three-year trading record.

TechMARK is also unlike its two overseas rivals in being purely oriented towards technology, since the other two are broadly based markets where stocks such as Microsoft Corp and Mobilcom are only the most high profile members.

From Vodafone to stordata

Stocks in the two techMARK indices range from mobile phone group Vodafone Airtouch Plc -- Britain's second biggest company with a market value of some 88 billion pounds -- to the likes of IT services company Stordata Solutions Plc, valued at around three million pounds.

The new market's two indices will be the FTSE techMARKAll-Share, a broad-based measure covering the new market as a whole, and the FTSE techMARK 100, excluding the larger stocks and covering those with a market value of less than four billion pounds.

Only the latter will be calculated in real time. The former will be calculated once a day at the market close.

Launching the new indices, Chancellor of the Exchequer Gordon Brown said he welcomed the initiative.

"Techmark emphasises the importance of new technology and by including FTSE fledgling companies alongside FTSE 100 companies, it recognises that the new companies of today can be the leading companies of tomorrow," Brown said.

Yet some market participants say the move could be too little, too late to attract the attention of global fund managers.

"We hope it will have some effect in raising the profile of some of the smaller technology companies...but we are not entirely convinced it will," said David Rough, Group Director of Investments at Legal & General Investment Management, which controls funds of between 90 and 100 billion pounds.

Others welcomed the move as a way for the LSE ride the global surge of investment demand for growth companies able to increase profits at a time of low inflation and steady economic expansion.

Warburg Dillon Read calculated that the overall techMARK index would have risen by some 24 percent so far this year, outperforming the pan-European Eurotop 300 index by 10.8 percent.

"We see the outlook for techMARK as particularly favourable," Warburg analysts said in a research note. "In a world of price stability, weaker companies are more exposed to pressure on profitability, reinforcing the relative value of strong growth companies."