The PLUS market has gone through a period of immense change over the last year or so.  It has enhanced its status to that of a recognised investment exchange, and restructured its offering into two markets, the primary market (consisting of the PLUS-quoted and PLUS-listed markets) and the secondary market (PLUS-traded) for securities already listed elsewhere in London or in Europe generally.

An interesting anomaly of the PLUS-traded market, however, is that although shares on the main market of the London Stock Exchange ('LSE') can automatically be traded on PLUS, this is not the case for AIM stocks - each AIM company must seek permission from the LSE before its shares can be traded on the PLUS platform.

This is something that the PLUS market has been trying to rectify for some time, negotiating with the Treasury and the Financial Services Authority on the issue.  The board of PLUS Markets Group Plc is obviously now feeling positive: in presenting its preliminary results for the year ended 31 December 2007, it stated that it is both hoping, and confidently expecting, proposals to allow it to trade AIM stocks to "be further pursued by the FSA and the Treasury this year."  At the moment about 80 AIM companies are traded on PLUS. The Board states its belief that "all AIM companies and their investors would benefit from being able to access the competitive trading environment already available to fully listed companies post-MiFID."  The Board goes on to say that the PLUS quote-driven market model offers high quality execution, which investment firms are currently unable to access in respect of AIM securities to achieve best execution. Of those AIM companies already trading on PLUS, three-quarters now see half or more of their total London activity taking place on PLUS.  If an agreement is reached this year, PLUS Markets Group Plc suggests it will be 'cash generative' in 2009.

So whilst some commentators are seeing the rejuvenated PLUS offering as a threat to AIM, the silver lining to this particular cloud could well be the ability of PLUS to enhance the liquidity of AIM shares. 

However, sceptics will still have ammunition: Claimar Care, an AIM listed company that was traded on PLUS, recently delisted from PLUS on the basis that there was no quantifiable increase in volume of trades.  So whilst the ability to be traded on multiple platforms should go some way to increasing liquidity, it seems that it may not be a complete panacea.  But then, what will?