Increased financial regulation has hurt the bottom line of Plus Markets, which was described by FT Alphaville’s Paul Murphy as Britain’s “little unregulated shop for penny dreadfuls”, the “equivalent” of the US Pinksheets. The company has been losing money and while it is still in talks to sell itself, it is planning to shut down shortly. Companies listed on the exchange (of which there are currently 156) will either list on the AIM or delist entirely.
See the Guardian article on this.
This comes just days after Deutsche Börse announced that it was shutting down its most lenient stock exchange, the First Quotation Board, after a regulatory crackdown failed to eliminate widespread stock fraud and manipulation of stocks on that exchange. I blogged about that.
Disclaimer: I have no positions in any stocks mentioned and no relationship with any people mentioned. I trade pump and dumps and OTCBB / Pinksheets stocks. This blog has a terms of use that is incorporated by reference into this post; you can find all my disclaimers and disclosures there as well.