Aim has missed its target – will it recover?

Aim, London's junior stock market, has become less appealing to investors amid scandals and an upcoming inheritance tax blow next April. Will it make a turnaround?

Stock price information displayed on a board
(Image credit: Chris Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

London’s Aim market turned 30 this month, but few are celebrating. The 1990s dream of an “accessible” venue to help small UK firms grow has gone largely unrealised, says Richard Evans of Fidelity International.

Listings on the London Stock Exchange’s junior market have fallen below 700, down from a peak of 1,700 in 2007. In the year to February, 61 firms left Aim and only ten joined. The FTSE Aim All-Share index has retreated 13% over the past five years.

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Markets editor

Alex is an investment writer who has been contributing to MoneyWeek since 2015. He has been the magazine’s markets editor since 2019. 

Alex has a passion for demystifying the often arcane world of finance for a general readership. While financial media tends to focus compulsively on the latest trend, the best opportunities can lie forgotten elsewhere. 

He is especially interested in European equities – where his fluent French helps him to cover the continent’s largest bourse – and emerging markets, where his experience living in Beijing, and conversational Chinese, prove useful. 

Hailing from Leeds, he studied Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Oxford. He also holds a Master of Public Health from the University of Manchester.