Plus management shake up

Date: Monday 08 Feb 2010

Plus Markets Group has appointed a new chairman and promoted its business development director to chief executive.

The company talks about “building on its present foundations and its expertise in trading and listing of small and mid-cap companies” but it will be interesting to see whether Plus Markets will continue to place more emphasis on the trading side rather than its own markets.

New chairman Giles Vardey was a director of the London Stock Exchange when AIM was launched. He was also formerly the boss of a division of fund manager Fidelity. Vardey returns to Plus Markets having been a non-executive director between January 2007 and September 2009. He and Ian Salter were replaced on the board by two Kuwaiti nominees of Amara Dhari Investments, which took a 17% stake after investing £5m at that time.

Stephen Hazell-Smith, who owns 0.5% of Plus Markets, has stepped down as chairman.

Cyril Theret takes over from Simon Brickles as chief executive, who becomes executive vice chairman. Brickles will become more of an international figurehead for Plus Markets.

The statement says that Theret will “drive the company towards profitability”. The business has certainly been cash hungry and is currently a long way from generating cash. The cash outflow from operations in the first half of 2009 was £4.83m.

Plus Markets had £10.3m in the bank at the end of June 2009. The £5m invested by Amara Dhari came in after that.

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