Stockbroker schedules £5m fundraising after losses widen

Stockbroker Arden Partners has outlined plans for a £5m fundraising after latest interims revealed losses widening.

Shareholder approval for the share placing will be sought at the end of the month and the firm, which has an office in Birmingham, hopes the new shares will be accepted for trading by June 30.

In the six months to April 30, 2017, the firm said revenue was up slightly at £2.9m (2016: £2.7m), however, it still saw a loss before tax of £1.3m (2016: £0.7m. Basic loss per share was 7.1p (2016: 4.2p) and no dividend has been proposed.

The placing will be one of the first matters presided over by new chief executive Donald Brown, who only took up his position last month.

He said: “I look forward with great enthusiasm to working with the team at Arden, to grow our existing franchise on a platform which will allow us to further develop relationships with both our institutional and corporate clients. The placing will assist us in achieving our goals.”

It was left to outgoing CEO James Reed-Daunter to outline the first half performance.

He said: “After a disappointing first half we are currently active on a number of corporate mandates and I look to the second half and beyond with confidence.”

He said the loss was due predominantly to the extremely limited delivery of the pipeline of corporate work which fell well short of internal budgets.

Nevertheless, he said the current pipeline was more encouraging and the firm was active on a number of corporate mandates, covering M&A, IPOs and Secondary fundraisings.

In addition to Mr Brown’s arrival, the form has recently appointed Fraser Marshall as Head of Equities and Tim Dainton as Head of Research.

“Together with the incumbent personnel we now have in place an extremely experienced and knowledgeable team, with which to develop our equity capital business,” said Mr Reed-Daunter.

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