Dowgate Capital - Significant profits on the way from the AIM experts

An interesting article from The Times:

THE London Stock Exchange boasted yesterday that it has attracted a record 129 foreign companies from 29 countries to its markets this year, raising a bumper £5.9 billion from new international issues — the highest level since the 2000 boom.
The Alternative Investment Market (AIM), the junior market, drew 112 of the new international issues, with 17 listing on the main market.

AIM has enjoyed phenomenal success, with 2005 proving yet another record year as 494 new issues raised £5.97 billion — double the £2.77 billion raised on AIM last year and more than half the £9.78 billion raised on the main market this year.

However, City experts said that unless close watch was kept on the quality and record of companies joining AIM, it may implode.

Justin Urquhart Stewart, director of Seven Investment Management, said: “We need to make sure there is careful validation and there is a standard in terms of the quality of the business plan of companies floating on AIM. Otherwise I fear this juvenile is likely to start behaving badly.”

Mr Urquhart Stewart said that there was now a string of East European and Asian stocks floating on AIM that “we can neither pronounce or understand how they operate”.

Some companies were starting to abuse AIM’s lighter regulatory regime by floating speculative “shell” companies that did not yet own any assets, he said.

Hilary Cook, of Barclays Stockbrokers, said: “AIM has been a great success but it comes with a health warning.”


The important bits to take from this are that there were 112 admissions to AIM this year, and we handled 13 of them, which gives us a share of 11.6%. Hopefully we all agree that's a pretty good result.

tfls