Happy birthday to AIM

Who wishes they had bought shares in Jet2 when it first floated?

All of us – they are up 4,170%.

Fevertree, the tonic maker, is up 457%. Pan African Resources – 1,084%.

All of these success stories and more are listed on AIM, which turns 30 on June 19.

It has had its failures of course – Patisserie Valerie, Langbar International – but then investing in small firms is risky.

Susannah Streeter at Hargreaves Lansdown says: “Over the past three decades, the Alternative Investment Market has offered the possibility for investors to own a slice of high growth companies, and it remains one of the most successful markets for smaller growth firms in the world. Despite the turbulence which has hit the AIM in recent years, there is plenty of opportunity ahead for UK smaller companies particularly with further interest rate cuts on the horizon.”

Critics say the cost of keeping an AIM listing is now a minimum of £250,000 a year, which is off-putting to many.

When companies quit AIM, the complaint is the same – that there is not enough liquidity, it is difficult to raise fresh capital.

It does seem odd that AIM companies with a market cap of less than £1m have the same listing requirements as Jet2, which is worth £3bn.

It seems clunky that they haven’t worked out a way around this.

That contributes to the narrative about the wider stock market – that the London Stock Exchange is in some kind of crisis.

The latest blow is Wise, one of the UK’s tech stars, deciding to switch its main listing to New York.

A “wake-up call for London”, some said, and they are probably right.

But one wonders if all this isn’t a bit overblown.

The London Stock Exchange isn’t claiming it doesn’t have some problems, but that’s life.

In terms of fund flow, America is an outlier because of the power of the Magnificent 7 stocks – Apple, Microsoft and the rest.

Britain has no comparable company to Apple, critics complain, but no one does.

Any stock picker running a UK only fund which doesn’t own the Mag 7 is going to look disappointing by contrast, but perhaps that’s not a fair comparison.

Otherwise the whole world might as well buy the Mag 7 and do nothing else.

One day after Wise announced its plans to move, Rosebank Industries, a venture set up by former Melrose founders Simon Peckham and Christopher Miller, raised well over £1 billion.

This attracted almost no attention so far as I can see, presumably because it didn’t fit the notion that the City is a useless place to raise money.

London Stock Exchange figures suggest different – that it remains the biggest player in Europe by far, and that it otherwise vies with Hong Kong from month to month.

You can’t say that the LSE has a PR problem – it is well looked after internally and externally, and executives always seem available to fight their corner.

It is just the narrative around it looks set to “miserable” and the press isn’t budging.

Perhaps this will change soon and we’ll see some pieces wishing AIM a happy birthday.

At 30, maybe it is just figuring things out.

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Simon.english@roxhillmedia.com