Oil Man Jim Company Oil & Gas Podcast & Blog, 17th May 2020

There was some talk last week about "cleaning up AIM” and I suggested perhaps borrowing a few ideas from the United States, who have been dealing with the challenges of regulating micro-cap fraud on a much larger scale, for a much longer period of time. 

Adopting certain provisions of their Securities Act would help, in particular, minimum holding periods for shares issued in placings and disclosure of compensation by paid commentators.  Another practical way and this approach proved very effective, is when a company announces a new business endeavour and heavy promotion starts off the back of a short news announcement, suspend the shares pending publication by the company of what in the UK would be a new admission document disclosing all information necessary for investors to make an informed investment decision.  I’m not aware of any companies to whom this happened in the US ever coming back.  Just a few thoughts if anyone was serious about wanting to clean up the market.