LSE Announces Fast Track Listing Process For AIM

by Phillip Morton, Investors Offshore.com

29 May 2003

The London Stock Exchange announced yesterday that is creating a 'fast track' process for small international companies wishing to list on its Alternative Investment Market (AIM).

The exchange said that companies already listed on nine overseas exchanges will now be able to use their existing annual report and accounts as a basis for a complementary quotation on AIM, and firms currently listed on the follwing bourses are included: Australian Stock Exchange, Euronext, Deutsche Börse, JSE Securities Exchange (South Africa), Nasdaq, NYSE, Stockholmsbörsen, Swiss Exchange and Toronto Stock Exchange.

The LSE said it expects the new route to make it considerably easier and faster for smaller, overseas-listed companies to access institutional investors in London as well as the wider European capital market. This means companies can diversify their investor base and access an additional pool of capital to their home market.

Simon Brickles, Head of AIM at the London Stock Exchange, said: "There are investors and capital ready for international companies in London. If a company has already gone through a due diligence process on another market, that can now help them access London's benefits via AIM. This initiative continues our rolling programme of innovative measures to make AIM more accessible to overseas companies."

At the end of April 2003 there were 705 companies on AIM with a total market capitalisation of £10.0 billion. Of these, 51 were international companies, with a combined market capitalisation of £1.2 billion. In 2002, there were 60 IPOs on AIM, representing 46 per cent of all the IPOs in western Europe for the year.

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