  Following the suggestion of Black (1997) that some massive extrasolar planets
may be associated with the tail of the distribution of stellar companions, we
investigate a scenario in which 5 < N < 100 planetary mass objects are assumed
to form rapidly through a fragmentation process occuring in a disc or
protostellar envelope on a scale of 100 au.
  These are assumed to have formed rapidly enough through gravitational
instability or fragmentation that their orbits can undergo dynamical relaxation
on a timescale of about 100 orbits.
  Under a wide range of initial conditions and assumptions the relaxation
process ends with either (i) one potential 'hot Jupiter' plus up to two
'external' companions, i.e. planets orbiting near the outer edge of the initial
distribution; (ii) one or two 'external' planets or even none at all; (iii) one
planet on an orbit with a semi--major axis 10 to a 100 times smaller than the
outer boundary radius of the inital distribution together with an 'external'
companion. Most of the other objects are ejected and could contribute to a
population of free floating planets. Apart from the potential 'hot Jupiters',
all the bound objects are on highly eccentric orbits. We found that, apart from
the close orbiters, the probability of ending up with a planet orbiting at a
given distance from the central star increases with the distance. This is
because of the tendency of the relaxation process to lead to collisions with
the central star.
  We discuss the application of these results to some of the more massive
extrasolar planets.
