Funds ‘underpin the value of AIM’

Investment and property funds are finding AIM an increasingly attractive proposition due to the ‘bureaucratic and convoluted’ listing process on the Official List, according to City figures.

Tom Nicholls, a corporate partner at solicitor Lawrence Graham, which has advised on 13 flotations and secondary issues for AIM-quoted investment funds in 2006, feels AIM will continue to benefit from the Stock Exchange’s overly stiff regulation for a while and says ‘we can get a new AIM fund up and running in three weeks – half the time it takes to get one onto the Full List.’ The other obvious attraction, he admits, is that the ongoing burden of regulation is much heavier on the Full List than on AIM.

But he is well aware that the music won’t play on for ever: ‘The regulations for funds are already slightly tighter than for the other companies on AIM and the AIM team’s next project will be to examine funds and their regulation.’ They are already encouraging Nomads to guide companies of more than £500 million onto the Main Board, ‘although this is not official yet’.

City mover and shaker (see page 13) Philip Secrett, a partner at AIM nominated adviser and auditor Grant Thornton, agrees that the proliferation of closed-end investment and property funds is ‘a major trend that is underpinning the value of AIM’. As a nominated adviser, the firm has brought 17 such entities to the market since last November, with a total value of ‘over £1.2 billion’. These include Dolphin Capital Investors, an investor in Greek and Cypriot residential resort developments and now the twentieth-largest company on AIM; a brace of Asian interests in Vietnam Opportunities and Vinaland; and German property pair Puma Brandenburg and Develica Deutschland. Secrett is working on another: ‘we have one more coming before Christmas worth between £200-£400 million.’