Small caps round-up: PLUS Markets, Sareum, Planet Payment

PLUS Markets Group, which provides listing and quoting services to around 140 companies on the stock exchange, has recommended its shareholders to vote in favour of the proposed disposal of its PLUS-SX division to ICAP for a nominal sum at its general meeting on June 18th. 'The disposal will, therefore, help both the group preserve remaining shareholder value and protect the reputation and continuity of the RIE [Recognised Investment Exchange] for its existing listed and quoted companies.'

The company, which announced in February that it would commence a formal sale process, said in May that it intended to "commence a process of orderly closure" and would be wound down over a period of up to six months "in order to minimise market disruption". The group's 2011 results, announced Wednesday, reflected its challenging environment, with revenues falling from £3.05m to £2.91m. As annual operating costs were significantly reduced, the pre-tax loss came in a £2.56m, below the prior-year loss of £5.67m. Shares were down nearly 19% in afternoon trade.

Sareum Holdings, which develops drugs to combat cancer, has raised just under £0.23m before expenses after placing around 26.8m shares at 0.85p each. The company believes the placing is the most effective way of providing capital to accelerate its drug discovery programme and to provide working capital for the company. It is expected that the shares will begin trading on June 11th. The company now has around 1.5bn shares in issue.

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Planet Payment, an international payment processing provider, has integrated its iPAY multi-currency eCommerce gateway with the 3D secure solution owned by CardinalCommerce Corp, known as the Cardinal Centinal, which provides online and mobile merchants with a solution to reduce fraudulent chargebacks, manual reviews and interchange rates.

Online customers are asked to enter a PIN code at checkout, which is verified by the bank that issued the credit card. The 3-D Secure program is supported by both Visa and MasterCard. The platform is designed to reduce operational costs and losses as a result of fraud. The agreement means Planet Payment customers can receive the fraud protection offered by the 3-D Secure programs.

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