Share market operator PLUS Markets Group plans to trade FTSE 250 companies and sees gains from any London Stock Exchange takeover.

AIM-quoted PLUS Markets, which operates the former Ofex market (now rebranding as PLUS) and offers a trading platform in 750 listed and unlisted securities with a combined market value of more than £65 billion. Backed by brokers and dealers including Charles Stanley, Cenkos Securities, Close Brothers, KBC Peel Hunt and Shore Capital, PLUS Markets claims a market share of more than 15 per cent of trading activity outside the FTSE 350 and is keen to extend its coverage.

Chairman Stephen Hazell-Smith and chief executive Simon Brickles (who previously headed the LSE's junior partner AIM) argue market players prefer PLUS Markets' market maker-driven dealing system to the LSE's SETS order book system, which, they argue, only provides adequate liquidity in the very largest stocks. They contend any US or European purchaser which might ultimately buy the LSE would be unlikely to devote much time or energy to making it a more congenial market for the smaller counters which could see PLUS Markets as offering an attractive alternative.

PLUS Markets is in a position to trade cash shells suspended from other markets and since April PLUS-traded securities have been eligible for Self Invested Personal Pension Schemes. Brickles argues the recent reduction in Venture Capital Trusts' and Enterprise Investment Schemes' gross qualifying assets from £15 million to £7 million, should reduce their fund raisings to a size 'most favourably achieved on PLUS'.

The AIM authorities recently moved to impose potentially irksome reporting requirements on AIM companies also using PLUS Markets to trade their shares. Brickles argues this was an anti-competitive step — and claims AIM 's marketing department knew of it before the regulatory side announced it — but says he hopes 'good sense will prevail', reaching an amicable solution.

Shares in PLUS Markets, which lost £1.25 million on £1.45 million last year after heavy investment in services, now trade at 30.25p, valuing the business at £40.7 million. They are down from a March high of 38.75p but well up on 6.25p last September, when Growth Company Investor drew attention to their speculative potential.

They could go further if the company looks like achieving its bolder ambitions.

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