His training as a barrister must have stood Simon Brickles in good stead over the past 18 months. The chief executive of Plus Markets has just concluded a bruising legal battle with the London Stock Exchange over the right to trade on the LSE-owned Alternative Investment Market (AIM).
Mr Brickles quit the LSE, where he had helped to create AIM, after a difference of opinion in 2004 and joined the nascent Plus operation, although he says that he retains cordial relations with Paternoster Square. Plus was based on the old Ofex over-the-counter market, then being refinanced. It was a quote-driven service whereby dealers agreed sales among themselves rather than relying on an electronic order book and was seen as more suited to trading in less liquid small and medium-cap stocks.
Plus?s interim trading statement for the half-year to the end of June shows a fall in revenues to £1.49 million from £1.6 million because of subdued market conditions and a £2.5 million legal bill for taking on the LSE. Plus is still loss-making, with a £5.85 million deficit.
More tellingly, Mr Brickles was able yesterday to point to figures suggesting that Plus now has more than a tenth of all trading in equities in London since it started offering all AIM stocks. Such statistics are difficult to analyse, because they include ancillary activities other than share deals, but this figure is about equal to all three other new entrants into the London market ? Chi-X, Bats and Turquoise. On those figures, from Thomson Reuters, the LSE?s share of London equities has slipped below 55 per cent, although the Exchange prefers to focus on figures for pure equities trading that give it 63 per cent.
Mr Brickles said: ?Plus attracted 10 per cent of all UK share trading in August as, for the first time, Plus was able to trade all AIM stocks. Obviously, it?s too early to draw long-term conclusions from that number, but it seems to endorse Plus?s comparative advantage over other exchanges and platforms in the small/mid-cap sector, which is the majority of UK-listed shares.?
Last week he raised £5 million from Amara Dhari Investments, a vehicle set up by Middle Eastern investors to take 17 per cent in Plus. This will strengthen the balance sheet, though Plus has about £10 million in the bank. He hopes that the link will steer Gulf investors towards Plus in London. In the first half, more than 36 billion shares were traded, triple the level of a year before. Market capitalisation of all Plus companies was up a third to £2.5 billion.
http://business.timesonline.co.uk/tol/business/...kers/article6853046
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