Investors get more from AIM than LSE

Thanks to the introduction of Rule 26, all but 13 of the 1,670 companies listed on the AIM market have now established websites where investors can access not only their latest shareholder reports but a wide range of other relevant information. EveryInvestor’s free company reports service, fcreports.com, gives free access to all of these companies’ reports and to the reports from PLCs listed on the London Stock Exchange.

Says Chris Gilchrist of EveryInvestor: “AIM’s Rule 26 is highly prescriptive and though not all AIM-listed companies have yet provided all the required information, all but 13 have made their latest financial reports available as PDFs on their websites.”

Only a few months ago as many as a quarter of AIM-listed companies were not providing this information on their websites.

The London Stock Exchange, which acts as the regulator of the AIM market, introduced the new rule last February with a deadline of August 20th 2007. The rules governing disclosure by LSE-listed companies are made by the UK Listings Authority (now part of the FSA) and are far less prescriptive. Though large LSE-listed PLCs such as the constituents of the FTSE 100 Index do provide a wealth of information on their websites, the quality of information provided by smaller LSE-listed firms is often lower than that provided by AIM-listed businesses.

The internet is now the natural source of information on publicly listed businesses and with its new rule for AIM, the LSE has raised the bar for the standard of information provided.

EveryInvestor’s recently-launched free service, fcreports.com, enables investors to access the vast majority of UK PLCs’ financial reports at one website.