After a near-£3 million annual loss, PLUS Markets Group sees a 2009 turnaround if it can trade all AIM shares.

The AIM–quoted company, which operates the PLUS share trading platform, increased turnover 43 per cent to £3.1 million last year, during which it launched a new, integrated trading and market surveillance technology platform. Headed by erstwhile AIM boss Simon Brickles, PLUS Markets won Recognised Investment Exchange status and its PLUS-quoted market, which began life 13 years ago as Ofex, increased its quoted companies to 217, ten per cent of them international.

PLUS Markets’ loss rose from £1.24 million to £2.98 million. The company, which raised £25 million at 14p in January 2007, says this was ‘in line with budgeted infrastructure development’ in a year that saw PLUS trading services mount a sustained challenge to AIM and the main London Stock Exchange.

Brickles says 60 investment firms have been attracted to become trading members of PLUS, which captured more than half of all UK retail share trade sales in January of this year. More than 600 ‘small- and mid-cap companies’ now see the majority of their trading take place on PLUS, declares the company, ‘of which more than 400 are listed or quoted on other markets’.

Under existing regulations, AIM companies, unlike fully listed ones, must give their consent to having their shares traded on PLUS and 80 have already done so. If PLUS Markets could trade all AIM companies as it can fully listed ones, the company argues PLUS would represent ‘more than half the liquidity in more than half of all the companies listed or quoted in the UK’.

PLUS Markets, which had abortive talks about linking with the new Turquoise inter-bank share trading project, is negotiating with the Treasury and Financial Services Authority to change the rules to allow it to trade all shares on the same basis as fully listed ones. If an agreement is reached this year, the company, which points to an increasing trend of AIM-quoted companies seeking PLUS listings, too, suggests it will be ‘cash generative’ in 2009.

PLUS Markets Group shares, which surged from 5.12p in 2005 ago to 38.75p two years ago, are now down at 13.5p, valuing the company at £42.5 million. Success on the AIM question should perk them up.

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