Aim vs lse

AIM Market in the UK
1. Introduction

It is interesting to find that Roel Campos have made the likened between the AIM and a casino. He pointed out that 30% of the issuers that list on theAIM are gone in one year, however he is not giving his information source and he is certainly not analyzing the reasons why companies delist and those reasons are key before making an assumption likethe one he made. (Treanor, 2007)
Compiling the data on the AIM Market statistics 2012 it can be seen in Figure 1 that until 2007 (when Roel Campos made the assumption) the number of companies listed inthe AIM was growing every year. (Web site London Stock exchange, 2012)

Figure 1 Number of companies listed in the Alternative investment market (AIM) by year.

On the other hand, Sacker (2011)made an analysis on why the companies leave the AIM and he presented figure No. 2 that shows a comparison between the number of companies leaving the AIM and the companies joining in the same periodof time.

Figure 2. Companies leaving AIM versus companies joining AIM from the first Quarter 2008 to the third quarter in 2011.

In this analysis Sacker (2011) indicated that 52% of the companiesdelisted in 2011 left the AIM because either they migrated to the main market or due acquisitions. Sacker commented “That is the AIM market working exactly how AIM investors would like it to work.”The Enterprise adviser (2011) argued that the companies that have been acquired due the means of AIM market under what they perceived to be depressed share valuations this means acquisitive companiescan buy cheap AIM businesses, which is not convenient for medium or small companies.
This is according to the Enterprise adviser (2011) due the high costs for funding the listing which isapproximately 60,000 pounds a year and the difficulties to attract meaningful equity investment, small and medium companies which used to be attracted to access to capital and credible public listing when AIM...