A MAJORITY of the 17 Irish companies listed on the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) in London have no plans to list on the new market for secondary stocks being planned by the Irish Stock Exchange.

This will come as a blow to Tom Healy, the Dublin exchange’s chief executive, who is planning the launch of the Irish Enterprise Exchange (IEE) for April 12. Healy last week expressed the hope that those Irish companies already on AIM would seek a dual listing on the new secondary market here.

“We have no intention of seeking a dual listing,” said Oisin Fanning, the chief executive of Smart Telecom, which last year listed on AIM. “Why would we want to incur the extra costs?” Likewise, David Hough, a director of Circle Oil, an Irish-registered oil exploration company with interests in China, said his company will not be listing in Dublin. “AIM is a much more sophisticated market than this (IEE),” said Hough. “I’m not really sure a dual listing matters.”

Maurice Healy, the chief executive of Calyx, an IT company that listed on AIM earlier this year, said: “There’s no real advantage to doing this at the moment. Besides, Irish institutions will invest in AIM companies as it is.”

Tony Richardson, the chief executive of Alltracel, which makes anti-bleeding products, said: “We’ve no plans to do it and it’s not been tabled at board level,” he said.

The IEE will replace the existing Developing Companies Market and the Exploration Securities Market, which have struggled to attract new listings in recent years.

The eight companies listed on these markets will switch to the new exchange. The new market will apply a lighter regulatory touch. It will require companies to have a minimum market capitalisation of €5m.

AIM is one of the fastest-growing stock markets in the world. It was formed in 1995, more than 1,300 companies have been admitted, raising more than £11 billion (€16 billion) between them.

One senior executive at an Irish stockbroking firm, who asked not to be named, was critical of the timing of the IEE’s launch. “They’ve missed the boat,” he said. “This should’ve been done years ago and AIM is too well established at this stage.”

Industry sources say that there is only a limited appetite here for small cap stocks, comprising about 1,000 or so retail investors.

Norish, a cold storage company that is relinquishing its full stock market quote in Dublin for an AIM listing, also has no plans to join the new market for small caps here.

“We have no plans whatsoever to list on this new market,” said Ted O’Neill, Norish’s Dublin-based executive chairman. “Norish effectively does all its business in the UK and this move is a reflection of that.”

John Teeling, the Clontarf-based entrepreneur who controls five AIM-listed companies, said he had no immediate plans to list any of them in Dublin.

“On the surface, it makes some sense but we’d have to look at the costs of a second listing before making a decision,” he said. Teeling has been a long-time supporter of AIM and controls African Diamonds, African Gold, Pan Andean, Minco and Petrel Resources. He shunned the Dublin market for each of these listings.

Teeling, however, did offer one glimmer of hope to Healy and his new exchange. He hopes to bring Persian Gold, a company exploring for gold in Iran, to the stock market within the next four months. “We would certainly look very carefully at listing Persian Gold on both the Dublin and London exchanges,” he said.