LONDON: In 2005, Young & Co’s Brewery Plc was one of 40 companies to transfer its shares from the London Stock Exchange’s main market to its growth segment. The nearly 200-year-old pub chain was attracted by the smaller exchange’s tax incentives, “growing success and popularity”.
Two decades later, London’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM) has less than half the number of listed stocks and Young’s is heading back to the main market in search of new investors and index inclusion.
Since 2007 the exchange has been losing the tussle all stock markets are engaged in: can you attract more new listings than you have cancellations. Young’s is part of a resurgent wave of companies moving up to the main market, something that’s both a sign of the growth market doing its job, but also making that perpetual tussle harder.
London-listed companies transferred their shares from AIM to the main market at the fastest rate in 14 years in 2025, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Seven out of the just over 600 firms moved their shares to the more regulated main market last year, and at least five plan to make the move in the next 12 months.
AIM has been a key source of growth capital for the UK’s startups, speculative miners and biotech companies.
It helped launch companies like Asos Plc, Plus 500 Plc and Entain Plc onto the main market.
Yet, 30 years after its launch even the London Stock Exchange is considering big picture questions around its core function in a world where private and venture capital is abundant.
The draw of a main market listing is clear. There’s the possibility of benchmark index inclusion, and access to larger, more active investors.
In contrast, AIM-listed stocks are declining, independent analysis is rare and the market’s few dedicated investors are starved of new cash.
The FTSE AIM All Share index dropped 34% in the five years through 2025, in contrast to a 46% gain in the FTSE All-Share Index, which tracks the main market.
Young’s shares are trading at the same level they were in 2013, but it is expected to report more than double the adjusted operating profit it did that year.
“We would love to get to move into the FTSE 250,” said Simon Dodd, chief executive of Young’s, which is planning to transfer its listing in April.
“But in terms of the longer term plan, the main market just broadens our institutional appeal.”
Reforms introduced to make the main market more attractive and stem the flow of companies leaving the exchange for the United States have accelerated the process by narrowing key distinctions between the UK’s growth and main markets.
Young’s started considering the move after rules were relaxed for firms with a dual-class structure, Dodd said.
Serica Energy Plc is considering a transfer now that the Financial Conduct Authority eased rules for significant transactions, a spokesperson said.
“Perhaps some of the attraction of being on AIM has diminished,” said Berenberg analyst James Bayliss.
AIM-listed firms have been acutely hit by the wider issues plaguing London’s capital markets.
A report by the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change and the Onward think tank in 2024 found that a lack of institutional investment, a decline of funds focused on small UK companies, lower liquidity and insufficient analyst coverage, were contributing to the decline.
Mid-size AIM-listed companies, for example, had on average a quarter of the analysts covering similar companies in the United States, the report found.
“We continue to work with all stakeholders to revitalise equity investment and provide an ecosystem that enables young, dynamic, innovative companies to start, grow scale, and stay in the United Kingdom,” a spokesperson for London Stock Exchange Group Plc said in a statement. — Bloomberg