Statements in the article like "Dragon was wondering why L.& H.’s share price had been gyrating wildly" made me think L&H must have been public. (Before the recent emergence of pre-IPO secondary markets, a private company wouldn't even be commonly described as having a generally-known 'share price' unless/until it went public.)

Wikipedia confirms L&H had gone public on NASDAQ in 1995:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lernout_%26_Hauspie