The rising stars of Aim, London's junior stockmarket

Aim, the LSE’s junior market, may in time overtake the FTSE 100 as the benchmark of our new economy, says Matthew Lynn.

Woman taking a selfie in a boohoo branded mirror
Boohoo is not resting on its laurels
(Image credit: © Don Arnold/WireImage/Getty Images)

Boohoo has just bought department-store chain Debenhams. By the time you read this Asos may well have bought Topshop. As the dust settles on those deals, people will be pointing out that it symbolises a changing of the guard in retailing, with the brash new internet-based companies snapping up some of the grandest, or at least in the case of Topshop, snazziest names in the business. That is true. But it symbolises something else as well, which may be more surprising, and may matter more in the medium term: the stars of the Aim market are starting to overtake the giants of the FTSE.

Two remarkable success stories

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Matthew Lynn

Matthew Lynn is a columnist for Bloomberg, and writes weekly commentary syndicated in papers such as the Daily Telegraph, Die Welt, the Sydney Morning Herald, the South China Morning Post and the Miami Herald. He is also an associate editor of Spectator Business, and a regular contributor to The Spectator. Before that, he worked for the business section of the Sunday Times for ten years. 

He has written books on finance and financial topics, including Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis and The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031. Matthew is also the author of the Death Force series of military thrillers and the founder of Lume Books, an independent publisher.