UK 02:45 Sunday, 25 October 2026
Breaking news and expert analysis on fast-moving AIM and LSE listed shares
Disclosure: I own shares in one or more of the stocks mentioned. I wrote this article myself, and it expresses my own opinions. I am not receiving compensation for it (other than from ShareProphets). I have no business relationship with any company whose stock is mentioned in this article.
Quite simply, the firm of Beaumont Cornish is not fit for purpose as a Nomad. It epitomises all that is wrong with the AIM market. The epic fiasco surrounding the New World Oil and Gas Placing may be the last straw but Beaumont Cornish has form going back years. Even with regard to just this one company there have been serial disasters, but there are more cases where Beaumont Cornish has failed in its duties as Nomad.
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Comments
AB
BC are our Nomads and the picture you paint is not one I recognise. BC are on the side of the good guys.
You may recall a dinner at the Pizza restaurant. David Lenigas was one of those speaking. He defended BC, saying of his Nomads they were the one who were toughest and gave him the hardest time. Of course, shortly afterwards he replaced them. But I don’t think it was for being easy-going.
The fact is the Nomads are on the same side as us. They want effective regulation. Working with them and helping them may be better than continually attacking them. Some will be stupid, arrogant, and resistant to any advice. Go for them if you wish. These, however, are not the characteristics of BC, least of all of Roland Cornish himself.
They hate it as much as you do when directors deliberately pull the wool over their eyes or are economical with the truth. Frauds and deceits are not the result of a lack of regulation but of those who look at the regulation in place, and work out how to circumvent it. The battle between the besiegers and besieged, the prisoners and the warders, the regulators and the fraudsters………..these are eternal battles, with victories only temporary, as each side develops new techniques and counters.
Example of why Nomads are good: the disgusting First Equities facility was utilised by AIM companies last year. You were able to pillory not just the directors but the Nomad, and through the Nomad the lawyers and AIM Regulation, incessantly beating on the door until they listened. Very effective it was.
This year they came back for a main board company. You bleated once, got ignored by the board, and were…..immediately out of options. If a main board company chooses to issue a lying RNS, or ignore inconvenient facts, there is nothing much you can do. the FCA is pretty busy, and very slow. Like a NHS GP’s waiting room, it is flooded with the worried well. The patient may well die before he gets referred (if ever) to a specialist.
We are lucky to have the Nomad system. It could always work better – let’s constructively engage with that – but it’s better than nowt.
If the LSE or AIM makes a mistake – we’ve seen that, with numbers of shares admitted – it’s never ‘their’ mistake and they never fess up. They are the regulator; it’s their rules; why should they? They are anonymous too. The Nomad is easy to beat up on the other hand – he has a name, a face, he’s not an official, and he’s in the middle – and AIM may then tut at him too for the same mistake they may make or the same negligence AIM or the FCA may show again and again with impunity.
MrContrarian
AB says “If a main board company chooses to issue a lying RNS, or ignore inconvenient facts, there is nothing much you can do.”
Apart from forcing the company to issue a correction when the lie is discovered, or resign if they don’t.
Or just resign if you discover your client is a crook and issue a statement saying why, so that shareholders know they are crooks as well.
Or is this simplistic application of ethics and transparency too hard in the Nomad system that we are “lucky to have”?
AB
MrContrarian: I wrote ‘main board company’. My purpose was to distinguish their position from that of AIM companies. Main board companies do not have Nomads as you surely know. Perhaps you misread?
MrContrarian
Sorry, AB, yes I did mis-read “If a main board company chooses to issue a lying RNS”. What a dipstick.
It’s a shame that so few lies get corrected by RNS on AIM or the main board though.
J P Spaghetti
“We are lucky to have the Nomad system. It could always work better – let’s constructively engage with that – but it’s better than nowt.”
I think the Nomad system in conjunction with the FCA and AIM Reg. in their current incarnations may well be worse than nowt on the grounds – as I’ve commented before – that its/their very existence lures would-be punters into a false sense of security.
Marvin
Who is the ‘investor’ mentioned in the FT article ?
TW Note - not me, I have zero positionIs it you Tom?
If so a namecheck would have been in order seeing as Ben got his.
Marvin
Think it was using the term generically rather specific to NEW