1 Jorma Korhonen/Anthony Bolton (2)
The appointment of 40-year-old Finn Jorma Korhonen to succeed the formidable Anthony Bolton as manager of the giant Fidelity group’s £3.25 billion Global Special Situations Fund raised some City eyebrows. Fidelity, AIM’s biggest institutional investor, has split its original Special Situations Fund into two and Bolton will run the other half until later in 2007. A ‘contrarian’ investor in the Bolton mould, Korhonen likes to recall how six years ago he started piling into bombed-out super tanker companies and has since seen their prices surge.

2 Joel Plasco (-)
Joel Plasco’s path to the post of chief executive officer of the de-merged Collins Stewart’s stockbroking business began at solicitor Gouldens. As a corporate lawyer, he met Terry Smith, Collins Stewart’s aggressive chief executive (and now Plasco’s chairman on the quoted broking side), and later joined the company’s corporate finance department. Now in his thirties, Plasco left to found technology investor New Media Spark with former Collins top man Michael Whitaker in 1999, returning six years later to run the company’s inter-dealer broking business. Collins Stewart is easily AIM’s leading IPO broker, having floated 28 companies in the last 12 months.

3 John Dodd (4)
One of the four founders of the £10 billion Artemis investment group, fast car fan John Dodd has achieved impressive returns with his UK Smaller Companies Fund, whose value has increased more than five-fold since its launch. His well-timed entry and exit from the tech boom won him plaudits, as has his more recent liking for the energy sector. In the year to March, the fund rose a respectable 27.6 per cent. Artemis is the second largest investor in AIM companies.

4 Richard Feigen (9)
The genial Richard Feigen is managing director of Seymour Pierce, AIM’s leading nominated adviser and broker and renowned for its entrepreneurial approach. Starting in the City as a private client broker some 20 years ago before moving into corporate finance, he joined Seymour Pierce in 1998, becoming managing director the following year. In 2003, Feigen jointly led the firm’s management buy-out, which was funded by Jon Moulton’s Alchemy Partners, and has helped put the broker more firmly on the map.

5 Simon Hayes (-)
The ever-youthful Simon Hayes is the man charged with taking KBC Peel Hunt to the next level following Tim Cockcroft’s departure earlier this year. With 13 years’ experience under his belt and the support of such market stalwarts as Adam Hart and Steven Fine, this shouldn’t be a problem as his firm is in fine fettle – KBC acts for over 90 AIM companies as either broker or nomad and in the 12 months to November 2006 raised more than £446 million for 18 new issues. The birth of his first child recently means Simon has less time for his other more dubious passions – supporting Chelsea and flying planes. Knocking the latter on the head will probably reduce KBC’s keyman insurance.

6 Andrew Stewart (1)
Racehorse enthusiast and Barbados dweller Andy Stewart steered fast-moving small-to-medium company broker Cenkos to an autumn float little more than a year after co-founding the company, which he named after his favourite nag. The £2.5 million simultaneous AIM and PLUS offering left him with 23 per cent of the broker, now valued at £103 million. A gambler out of hours and a vigilant scrutineer of deal details in, Stewart has embarked on a pro-active strategy which has seen his firm act for a range of companies, including Omega Underwriting, Helphire and Raven Russia and become the second largest holder in PLUS Markets Group.

7 Alex Snow (6)
The unusually tall rugby aficionado expanded his already impressive investment bank by swallowing rival Willams de Broe in the summer. The integration has cost a few bob, but it gives Evolution Securities added firepower in many areas and assists Snow’s ambition of making his firm less reliant on primary corporate finance activities. He reckons the deluge of new companies in the past 12 months has given the junior market a bout of ‘indigestion’.

8 Andy Brough (10)
It’s been another year of out-performance from Mr Brough, whose career started with Schroders in 1987 after he had picked up his economics degree and completed a two-year stint at PwC. Co-head of the Pan European Small and Mid Cap Team, the UK Small and Mid Cap investment trust he manages (with Rosemary Banyard) is the best in its class over a three-year period, having witnessed NAV surge 119 per cent. He’s nothing short of a legend.

9 John Duffield (-)
Duffield is the maverick fund manager who built Jupiter into one of the most successful retail fund management businesses before his departure in 2000 (he left after a spat with new German owner Commerzbank, likening three executives to Nazis). Today, he is on top once more as chairman of New Star Asset Management, the Knightsbridge-based money management firm he founded. Listed on AIM with a market value north of £1 billion, the asset manager enjoyed a highly fruitful first full six months as a public company, with Duffield overseeing a substantial advance in operating profits and growth in assets under management to £18 billion.

10 Neil Johnson (15)
Head of corporate finance in London for Vancouver-based investment group Canaccord Adams, Johnson has so far this year overseen 16 new AIM floats where Canaccord has been broker and/or adviser, raising over £250 million. Although historically a resources specialist, Johnson has helped manage a shift in focus whereby only four of these new arrivals came from its mining heartland. At 37, Johnson favours amateur rugby union over the traditional North American pastimes of log-felling and ice hockey.
No wonder his Canadian handlers believe he has gone native.

11 Philip Secrett/Gerry Beaney (16)
Scuba diving Secrett and fellow partner Gerry Beaney are the dynamic duo heading up the capital markets team at Grant Thornton, AIM’s leading accountancy firm. A consummate professional, he also sits on the AIM advisory board and is chair of the Quoted Companies Alliance Nomad committee. A GT man since 1994, Secrett says a major trend on AIM this year has been the proliferation of investment funds – GT has been Nomad to 17 such firms.

12 John Hall (-)
APCIMS chairman John Hall occupies the chief executive’s hot seat at LSE-listed Brewin Dolphin, the largest independent private client portfolio manager in the UK. A sailing enthusiast who enjoys travelling to the more remote regions of Asia, Hall’s empire has £20 billion of funds under management and boasts a rock solid reputation as broker to many of the junior market’s leading companies.

13 Daniel Nickols (-)
Few medieval languages graduates from Cambridge have served the City with as much panache as Nickols. He joined Old Mutual in 2001 following a career that saw him hold down various positions with distinction at Deloitte, Morgan Stanley and Albert E Sharp. It is as AAA-rated head of the UK Select Small Companies Fund that he has really made his mark. Over three years this £441 million unit trust has posted gains of 129 per cent (and 189 per cent over five years).

14 Andrew Buchanan (12)
A keen gardener, Buchanan is one of the small cap scene’s hardy perennials, having been tending to the smaller seedlings on AIM since its inception eleven years ago as the manager of Close Ventures’ band of VCTs. After a difficult summer, he is encouraged to see the new issues market picking up, with some still at ‘sensible valuations’.

15 Edward Vandyk (-)
Edward Vandyk is the main man in charge at Corporate Synergy, the fast-growing AIM specialist broker. As well as its growing reputation as an AIM adviser, Corporate Synergy acts as a sponsor on the Official List and as an adviser on the evolving PLUS Markets (previously OFEX). One of this year’s key events was the March takeover of Bristol-based Rowan Dartington. A key figure at the firm is the energetic head of broking Luke Ahern, a man ever on-hand to supply desperate financial hacks with a useable quote or ten.

16 Oliver Hemsley (3)
As chief executive of corporate finance house Numis, whose client numbers swelled to 101 from 83 last year, Hemsley manoeuvred the company to interim profits of £18.6 million. As broker, Numis has brought six fresh faces to AIM so far this year, coaxing £530.9 million out of investors, the fourth highest fundraising total. To take a break from cracking the whip over his City minions, Hemsley is rumoured to occasionally drive his brood from his Dorset country pile into town on a horse and trap.

17 Simon Brickles (44)
This experienced and erudite ex-barrister is the man who did so much to establish AIM as the world’s fastest-growing growth market in the first eight years or so of its life. For the past two years he has inspired a remarkable revolution at PLUS Markets which is, rather ironically, now giving AIM a run for its money. 190 companies have their shares listed on PLUS, while its trading platform makes markets in no less than 800 companies. Brickles is busily trying to recruit AIM companies to the platform, promising investors better prices, companies greater liquidity and his backers a wonderful corporate future. Good luck to him.

18 Phillip Richards (33)
Chief executive of aggressive hedge fund manager RAB Capital, AIM’s seventh most active institutional investor, this former army officer and born-again Christian was rewarded with a £7.5 million bonus for an excellent first full year on AIM, when RAB delivered a 50 per cent increase in assets under management to $2.6 billion. This helped the 45-year-old win the Entrepreneur of the Year gong at the 2006 AIM awards. A fat cat though he certainly is not – he gives a considerable chunk of his annual bonus to charity, bestowing £1 million towards the construction of a youth centre in Tonbridge, Kent.

19 David Williams (-)
Jersey-based David Williams, best known for his stint with Waste Recycling, chairs successful adviser and management team ‘facilitator’ Marwyn Captial. Over the past 18 months, the company has been instrumental in more than £660 million worth of transactions, with major successes including Zetar, the shell-turned-confectionery and snack foods group floated at £1 (and now trading north of £5), and Talarius, taken out at a very healthy premium by a joint venture between Tattersall’s and Macquarie.

20 Peter Webb (24)
The straight-talking, no nonsense boss of the influential – and steadfastly independent – Unicorn, Webb now has a total of ten funds in his stable, invested in all sectors of the market. The £106 million Eaglet Investment Trust remains the flagship fund, but the Unicorn AIM VCT, launched in 2001, continues to thrive (it is the best performing VCT in its class). His obsession with value investing is matched only by his obsession with horses.

21 Peter Hambro (-)
Financier Peter Hambro, chairman of the £978 million Russian gold mining giant that bears his name, has had another seemingly successful year – the first six months of 2006 saw Hambro report a 148 per cent spike in profits, despite unusually cold weather conditions hitting the group’s resources hunting ground. But he has had some licensing issues to sort out recently.

22 Chilton Taylor (23)
The owner of the small cap scene’s most famous hairstyle, the former Cambridge wicket-keeping Blue lifted aloft the award for AIM Accountant of the Year for the fourth year running in 2006. This year Baker Tilly has acted for around 22 new issues and is the reporting accountant for no less than 120 AIM companies.

23 David Williams (40)
Around 200 fund managers refused to back Williams’ Avanti Screenmedia when he tried to float it in 2002-03. They’re kicking themselves now of course as he finally got it off the ground in 2004 and it is easily the largest (and only profitable) retail TV advertising business in the UK. Rather remarkably, aerospace expert Williams also helped Avanti win the right to launch and operate a satellite, for which £50 million was swiftly raised. The launch date is 2008 and many contracts for its broadcast capacity have already been sold. When not smugly contemplating the near 150 per cent share price rise of his firm, he can be found weeping into his leeks about the state of Welsh rugby – or tending to his three children (all under the age of five!).

24 David Page (31)
Having given up a career as a cartographer to train as a teacher, Page took a job at Pizza Express as a dishwasher to fund his studies. Soon he found the ‘buzz’ of the restaurant was more his style and advanced to cook, to waiter, then manager and owner – and 20 years later he found himself chairman. ‘If I’d stayed on as a teacher the whole of the British education systems would have been sorted out by now!’ he humorously claims. At present his new restaurant chain, Clapham House, is one of AIM’s – and Britain’s – fastest-growing companies (see page 15).

25 Katie Potts (-)
If you take a quick glance down the share registers of the best performing companies on AIM, it is very likely that Katie Potts’ Herald Investment Management will be there. Since the launch of the fund in 1994, the engineering graduate and unreformed smoker has been an indefatigable backer of innovative technology and media companies. She’s also managed to outperform all benchmark indices in the past 12 years.

26 Wol Kolade (7)
Managing partner of ISIS, theinvestment manager of the Baronsmead
VCTs that are promoted by investment behemoth F&C

27 Geoff Foster (38)
A Daily Mail legend and London’s mostimportant market reporter

28 Michael Cunningham (-)
Urbane manager of six AIM Venture Capital Trusts under the Pennine brand

29 Bob Morton (27)
A one-man institution and chairman of Vislink, Armour, Tenon – and a big backer of Hatpin and PSG Solutions

30 Michael Jackson (26)
Chairman of high-flying Computer Software Group, MediaSurface and Elderstreet Investments

31 Sanjay Wadhwani (-)
The main man at Ingenious Media Active Capital, a £150 million fund launched
by Patrick MeKenna’s media empire

32 Nick Stagg & Ken Ford (30)
Chief executive and deputy chairman respectively of ever-active AIM broker
and nomad Teather & Greenwood Landsbanki

33 Clive Garston (36)
The partner leading the charge at lawyer Halliwells’ London office

34 Martin Thomas (-)
Global legal outfit Hunton & Williams is increasingly involved in AIM
transactions. Thomas is the European managing partner

35 David Milne (-)
CEO of fast-growing Wolfson Microelectronics

36 Gareth Edwards (-)
Legal adviser to some of the London’s biggest players and national head of the
Corporate Group at leading AIM lawyers Pinsent Masons

37 Martin Graham (39)
Inscrutable Head of AIM at the London Stock Exchange

38 Peter Ashworth (-)
Few know as much about growing companies as Man Utd fan Ashworth,
Charles Stanley’s enigmatic head of research

39 Leesa Peters (32)
Workaholic Peters has taken Conduit from nowhere to AIM’s fifth-largest PR firm

40 Howard & Graham Shore (-)
The financial duo behind investment bank Shore Capital’s inexorable rise

41 David Blackwell (21)
Demonstrative and gifted AIM expert at the Financial Times

42 Laurie Beevers (22)
Wine-loving CEO of WH Ireland

43 Emma Kane (-)
Networker extraordinaire – and managing director of PR firm Redleaf

44 Stephen Hazell Smith (37)
Moustachioed, droll chairman of PLUS Markets

45 Nick Robertson (-)
Energetic chief of retail phenomenon ASOS

46 Stephen Georgiadis/ Garry Levin (46)
Joint MDs of Altium Capital, London

47 Richard Power (28)
Fund manager at innovative investment manager Octopus

48 Julian Bosdet (35)
Much admired PR addict and chief of Abchurch Communications

49 Brian Hamill (-)
Boss of Imprint, the surging recruitment venture

50 Nick Fletcher (-)
Amiable market reporter at The Guardian