SAS chief talks down IPO talk

SAS chief executive Dr Jim Goodnight has denied that company is planning to go public this year.

Every year speculation mounts that SAS Institute, the world's largest privately held software company, is about to go public.

Goodnight is quoted in the FT as saying his company - and with a 67 per cent stake, it is still very much his company - is "still moving in the direction" of an IPO, but that it won't be "at least another year" from now.

Just over a year ago, fresh from delivering its first one billion dollar year, SAS was rumoured to be on the verge of handing over the handling of a flotation to investment bank Goldman Sachs.

The North Carolina-based company has traditionally had one of the lowest staff turnover rates in the industry, but with the internet boom started to lose employees to dot-coms and other new economy-driven businesses.

Floating and issuing stock options was thought to be one way of pushing staff loyalty levels back up.