Back in the summer, Restoration Partners reviewed the state of AIM in the context of US firms in general and US tech businesses in particular.
The thesis back at the ranch is that US tech company leaders are slowly waking up to the reality that it's still OK to be a CEO of an early stage technology public company.
It's just a bad time to be doing it in the US.
But there is a market where quality IPOs are welcome, where English is spoken, where business practices are first world and where the laws look a whole lot like America's.
Better still, that market - London's AIM - is in a place where there is no SEC, no such thing as a Class Action suit and no Sarbanes Oxley.
A no-brainer then for those quality CEOs who can command a market cap north of $100m and who know how to use the cash, paper and profile that flow from an IPO.
Well that's the theory. And it all stacks up except for the no-brainer bit.
On June 30th this year, there were about 1500 companies listed on AIM with a combined market cap of around $150bn. And of those 1500, just a little over 15% of them were not registered in the UK.
Amazingly, despite the almost total absence of IPOs in the USA, only 36 of the 1500 were American!
However the picture gets more interesting if you look at the recent past.
Here is the picture:
As you'll see, although the number of US companies is relatively small, 10 of the 36 arrived this year and, although the chart doesn't show it, 11 made their debut in 2005 up from 8 in 2004 with the remaining 4 spread over 2001-2004.
Since we carried out that research, 3 more Americans have joined AIM making it 13 so far this year with 3 months to go.
Not exactly a stampede, but a definite stream.
In the same time - the first 10 months of the year - there have been 371 IPOs on AIM, raising almost $14bn at today's exchange rate.
So that's the current situation - AIM continues to forge ahead of the rest of the world as the premier exchange for younger companies from all over the world.
It's just that the Stars and Stripes is still barely noticeable amongst the forests of flags.
Three dozen doesn't make a movement, but it does prove that it's possible - just not as eloquently as $14bn do!
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