Press Releases and Articles

British institutional shareholders like Britannic and Legal & General are still net sellers of their investments in West Midland companies, depressing prices and making high-yielding or emerging-growth companies even more attractive to a US fund looking to diversity. So hopefully plc executives and their advisers wondering why they bother with the big UK institutions will take the opportunity to pick the brains of our friends from across the pond while they can.

The second reason to cheer is the emergency of a new stock broking firm in Birmingham that will research West Midlands plcs properly, tout their shares around effectively and make so much money that Porsche dealerships around Edgbaston will think Christmas has come early.

More seriously, the arrival of Arden Partners on the scene will only help to strength the city's reputation as a thriving financial centre as well as reawaken institutional interest in those neglected regional plcs that have a bright future on the stock market.

Arden will not run a book on stocks - it neither has the financial muscle nor the interest to do so -freeing up its salesmen to put their clients first.

It will be interesting to see if this more traditional agency model prospers, given the question market hanging over the success of the integrated finance houses, like ABN Amro ING Barings or Dresdner Kleinwort Benson, that have market makers, salesmen, dealers, corporate finance and analysts all under one roof.