What do the following have in common: metatarsally challenged footballing wonderkid Wayne Rooney, two-time-Ashes-winning spin bowler Phil Edmonds, one-time Greek oil explorer Frank Timis, and ‘Brian Cohen’, the eponymous hero of The Life of Brian? Is it that they are not messiahs, but in fact rather naughty boys; or that they are all regarded favourably by Gordon Brown; or that you can invest in them all via the London Stock Exchange?
This is, of course, a trick question. The answer is, implausibly enough, all of the above, because they all represent controversial but strangely tax-efficient investment opportunities on London’s junior stock market. Welcome to the colourful world of Aim.
Aim, or the Alternative Investment Market, was set up in 1995 as an exchange on which shares in small companies could be issued and traded. It offered a lower-cost and less heavily regulated alternative to the ‘official list’ of the London Stock Exchange, hence the semantic distinction between fully ‘listed’ and Aim ‘traded’ companies. So it’s not surprising that more than 1,400 companies have since issued shares on Aim, raising more than £11 billion in the process. But with lower costs and less regulation have come, well …all-comers. Hence the unlikely, sometimes messianic and occasionally naughty characters that now inhabit Aim.
Wayne Rooney’s management company, Formation, floated on Aim in 2001 — but was tripped up earlier this year by reports of the player’s unpaid gambling debts and his agent’s possible Football Association ban. Mr Edmonds’s oil company, White Nile, saw its shares rise from 10p to 138p in their first week of trading on Aim last year — only to get bogged down in a drilling deal with the Sudanese People’s Liberation Movement in southern Sudan that ignored a rival company’s existing deal with the other Sudanese government sitting in Khartoum, which claimed to hold sway over oil rights throughout the war-torn country.
Mr Timis’s oil company, Regal Petroleum, also saw its shares rise, from 120p to 509p in a matter of weeks in 2004, but then fall from grace to 35p in February 2005, not because of his previous convictions as a heroin dealer, but because of his feigned conviction in talking up a worthless Greek asset, and his attempt to flog the company without telling fellow directors.
Comments
Join the debate for just £1 a month
Be part of the conversation with other Spectator readers by getting your first three months for £3.
UNLOCK ACCESS Just £1 a monthAlready a subscriber? Log in