Gibraltar-based financial services group STM hopes to raise �7.5 million on AIM to acquire corporate and trustee service providers (CTSPs).

These companies help individuals avoid tax by keeping custody of their assets in tax havens, and STM chief executive Tim Revill intends to concentrate on the expatriate market, especially the expanding British enclave of southern Spain. The float will help STM fund the acquisition of Revill’s own Fidecs Group for �13.6 million in cash, shares and debt.

The Isle of Man-based STM holding company was set up by Revill and AIM-listed ‘strategic investment company’ Equity Special Situations (ESS), which had identified the highly fragmented CTSP market as ‘ideal for consolidation’. Revill said Fidecs ‘needed to spread it wings, and by divine intervention we were introduced to ESS’.

He argued that, although the market is dominated by a few giants, there are more than 500 small ‘Mom & Pop’ companies in Jersey, the British Virgin Islands, the Isle of Man and Gibraltar alone. He suggests that means STM will be able to grow rapidly using its equity to buy established rivals.

Fidecs, which ‘has high earnings visibility and a loyal and expanding client base’, made �1.7 million post tax on �5 million sales last year. Revill hopes to make another ‘one or two smaller acquisitions in the first six months after listing, with a larger one within a year.’

Dealings in STM shares, pricing the whole enterprise at roughly �20 million, are expected to begin on 26 March.