Unlock the Editor’s Digest for free

Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

London’s junior stock market is in a dire state, no matter how you look at it. The number of companies listed on Aim is barely over 700, its lowest level in more than 20 years. In fact, the broader universe of small quoted companies is ailing. Take the universe of UK-listed companies valued at under £1bn, whether on the main market or Aim: their numbers are down by a third in the past 20 years.

There has been much soul-searching about the UK equity markets generally. But these small-cap difficulties have this week alone inspired a duo of think-tank reports. One, by capital markets think-tank New Financial, warns of an “almost existential threat”. The problem is there are no magic bullets that will reverse Aim’s decline.

Of course, the junior exchange’s problems cannot be disconnected from those of the wider London market, including the shift by UK pension funds to global equities allocation models, weak liquidity and structural valuation gaps compared with US peers (although the latter point has been contested by UBS among others).

The effect, though, has a disproportionate impact on smaller companies, argues New Financial’s managing director William Wright. Small companies that have delisted from Aim or are choosing to float elsewhere also complain about the lack of analyst coverage in the UK compared with other markets. Mid-size Aim groups have on average a quarter of the analysts covering them than US rivals, think-tanks the Tony Blair Institute and Onward have found.

Wider changes, such as the Financial Conduct Authority’s listing reforms, may help but will be something of a slow burn. Other measures could help: asset manager Abrdn has backed a call for the Mansion House Compact to be expanded to include all listed small caps. This voluntary agreement, signed last year by nine pension funds, aims for at least 5 per cent of members’ default funds to be invested in “unlisted” assets. This definition, however, already included Aim stocks. Amid calls to scrap stamp duty on share purchases, Aim again is already exempt.

Many proposals aimed at reviving the market involve tax breaks. Given UK chancellor Rachel Reeves has to close a £40bn funding gap, this is fanciful. The most optimistic outcome from the Budget would be no change to current tax reliefs.

The blunt assessment, from one of this week’s reports, was that Aim should simply be put out of its misery and scrapped. Unless policymakers and investors focus on ways to revive it, that is where the conversation will surely head.

nathalie.thomas@ft.com

A COIN expert has given insight into a rare detail on a 20p coin which makes it 300 times more valuable.

The professional, who goes by the name of the CoinCollectingWizard on TikTok, shared how an error on a 20p coin made in 2008 has made it one of the “holy grails” for collectors.

1

Almost two decades ago a number of 20p coins were struck with the wrong dye, resulting in no date on the coin.

The social media star said this was due to a mix-up at the Royal Mint when the new Royal Shield of Arms design was introduced.

It was the first time in 300 years that it had been produced without a date.

“This makes it highly sought after by coin collectors,” the coin-collecting professional said.

It is thought around 250,000 coins have the error.

The front of the coin features the traditional profile of Queen Elizabeth II.

Meanwhile, the back of the 20p features a segment of the Royal Shield.

Neither side of the coin features a date making it a rare find.

This coin is known as the undated 20p coin and can sell for up to £75 on places such as eBay.

It’s also still in circulation meaning you have a chance of receiving one in your change if you pay for something in a shop.

But that has not stopped coin collectors from paying a hefty sum to get their hands on one.

The Sun found a 20p mule coin that was sold for £75 this week on eBay.

Another seller paid £51 for the coin at the start of October.

However, it is important to note that a coin is only worth how much the buyer is willing to pay for it.

Other rare coins which could be worth more include the One Penny which dates back to 1893, but it’s the production error which makes it a valuable find. 

The ancient coin features Britannia on the back and the reverse of the coin is the usual Queen Victoria bun head, which is a feature on many coins from this era. 

What makes the coin valuable is an error with the number three in the date at the bottom of the coin. 

Under the number three of the error coin, it looks like there is the start of a number two.

If the coin features this it could be worth up to £600.

How to spot rare coins and banknotes

Rare coins and notes hiding down the back of your sofa could sell for hundreds of pounds.

If you are lucky enough to find a rare £10 note you might be able to sell it for multiple times its face value.

You can spot rare notes by keeping an eye out for the serial numbers.

These numbers can be found on the side with the Monarch’s face, just under the value £10 in the corner of the note.

Also if you have a serial number on your note that is quite quirky you could cash in thousands.

For example, one seller bagged £3,600 after spotting a specific serial number relating to the year Jane Austen was born on one of their notes.

You can check if your notes are worth anything on eBay, just tick “completed and sold items” and filter by the highest value.

It will give you an idea of what people are willing to pay for some notes.

But do bear in mind that yours is only worth what someone else is willing to pay for it.

This is also the case for coins, you can determine how rare your coin is by looking a the latest scarcity index.

The next step is to take a look at what has been recently sold on eBay.

Experts from Change Checker recommend looking at “sold listings” to be sure that the coin has sold for the specified amount rather than just been listed.

People can list things for any price they like, but it doesn’t mean it will sell for that amount.

We explain further how you can find out if you have a rare coin worth thousands sitting around the house.

Hello everyone! This is Lauly from Taipei. It’s been a while since the last time I hosted the weekly #techAsia. I took annual leave and took my toddler, who had just begun to walk, to Okinawa, Japan. Travelling abroad with a one-year-old is never easy, but it was only a one-hour flight, and seeing him smile at the schools of colourful fish and large whale shark at the Okinawa Churaumi Aquarium, and clapping his hands when he had a bit of tofu at a downtown izakaya made it all worthwhile.

One very interesting thing I noticed while in Okinawa was that wherever we went, we could hear people speaking Taiwanese. It seemed like 80 per cent of the tourists at the aquarium were Taiwanese, and the hotel where we stayed was full of other Taiwanese families.

It all reminded me of my interview with Chiao Yu-heng, chairman of Passive System Alliance, a leading Taiwanese electronics component maker. Chiao, who speaks fluent Japanese, spent years studying and working in Japan in his youth and has recently initiated many investments in the country to forge closer collaboration between Taiwanese and Japanese tech suppliers. “I really like Japan and there are many aspects where Japanese and Taiwanese companies complement each other,” he said.

Apart from taking a holiday, I also recently wrapped up a deep-dive with my colleague Annie Cheng Ting-Fang into Asia’s shortage of renewable energy. The theme keeps cropping up in interviews and at events. Leading Nvidia AI server maker Foxconn said at its annual tech day that it is building a superpower computing centre in the southern Taiwanese city of Kaohsiung, which will require newly designed buildings, new layouts of water pipelines and additional electricity supplies. Most striking of all, I learned that operating a rack of AI servers uses roughly as much electricity as 300 households.

Statistics like this are why the tech supply chain, from semiconductor and component makers to system integrators, are working to make AI computing more energy-efficient. The supply of energy, especially low-carbon emission energy, is going to be a key challenge for the global tech supply chain.

Going green

Delta Electronics is planning to build its own renewable power plants in India and Thailand, as the power and thermal management solutions provider steps up efforts to decarbonise its supply chain, Jesse Chou, Delta’s vice-president and chief sustainability officer, told Nikkei Asia’s Lauly Li and Cheng Ting-Fang in an interview.

Delta, a key power and thermal management system supplier for Nvidia’s GB200 server system, has identified that Thailand and India are the most challenging places for it to access sufficient renewable electricity.

“We can’t always rely on local governments to solve the issue,” Chou said. “We plan to build our own renewable energy plants to take a more active role to achieve our ultimate goal.”

Delta joined the RE100 initiative in 2021, making it one of the earliest companies in the tech supply chain to do so.

Delta’s move comes as its home market of Taiwan looks to raise its emissions-cutting target for 2030 as the island looks to secure its position in the global supply chain, according to this exclusive interview by Thompson Chau, Lauly Li and Cheng Ting-Fang with Environment Minister Peng Chi-ming. The current goal is to cut emissions 24 per cent, plus or minus 1 per cent, by 2030, compared to 2005, which is not ambitious enough, according to Peng.

“We hope to accelerate our net zero goal in Taiwan,” he said.

Popularity pay-off

Xiaohongshu, China’s answer to Instagram, is growing in popularity. The start-up’s revenues surged to $1bn in the first quarter of this year as it ramped up advertising on the platform.

The Shanghai-based unicorn turned profitable in 2023, a trend it continued in the first three months of the year as it generated $200mn in net profit, writes the Financial Times’ Eleanor Olcott. This is up from $40mn in the same period last year on revenues of about $600mn.

The country’s fastest-growing social media platform is beloved by city-dwelling young women, who flock to Xiaohongshu for restaurant, beauty and travel recommendations.

The start-up is a rare recent success story in a tech sector hit by bankruptcies and falling valuations and is one of a small group of promising tech unicorns that investors are eyeing for a potential initial public offering.

Top US computer maker HP is sharply scaling back the procurement decision-making power of its Taiwan team and increasing related positions in Singapore, as part of a major supply chain restructuring to mitigate geopolitical uncertainties, according to this scoop by Nikkei Asia’s Cheng Ting-Fang and Lauly Li.

The company has transferred responsibility for procurement and sourcing decisions to US-based executive Jonathan Jennings, who was newly hired this year and reports to HP’s chief supply chain officer, Ernest Nicolas. Taiwan, home to important suppliers in the laptop and desktop computer supply chains, has been a critical market for PC development and component procurement.

Tensions between Taipei and Beijing have led some tech companies to set up production or operational hubs in third countries, particularly in south-east Asia. US-China tech tension is also driving the supply chain shift.

HP’s move comes as the global PC industry has been in inventory correction mode since the second half of 2022, when demand from the work- and study-from-home boom ebbed. Worldwide shipments plunged nearly 14 per cent in 2023.

Start-up slowdown

China’s fervour for entrepreneurship is fading as Beijing shifts its strategic focus to semiconductors, autos and other more job-heavy industries, writes Nikkei Asia’s Wataru Suzuki.

Venture capital and private equity investment in China fell 38.7 per cent on the year in the first half of 2024, to Rmb196.7bn ($28bn), according to research company Zero2IPO. Money raised by fund managers also dropped 22.6 per cent to Rmb622.9bn. By comparison, venture capital and private equity investment in the US fell 3 per cent to $418.5bn during the same period, while fund managers raised 3.3 per cent more.

Local governments, another key source of funding, are increasingly backing companies that build factories, such as robot and drone makers, and companies in the semiconductor supply chain, rather than start-ups that often keep investors waiting for returns.

Ripples from the slowdown are spreading to businesses like the Shenzhen innovation centre and to Beijing’s Zhongguancun district, once known as the “centre of the universe” for its proximity to top universities, where empty cafés testify to the chill in networking and start-up hustle.

Suggested reads

1. China cyber security body calls for Intel review over security (Nikkei Asia)

2. Elon Musk battles Indian billionaires over satellite internet spectrum (FT)

3. Thailand to move up semiconductor value chain with first front-end fab (Nikkei Asia)

4. Rapidus’s Japan chip plant may bring $120bn economic windfall, but doubts remain (Nikkei Asia)

5. Head of Saudi tech institute pledges to limit China AI collaboration (FT)

6. Chinese carmakers deny intent to ‘overthrow’ western rivals (FT)

7. AMD, Intel team up as semiconductor stocks slump on ASML outlook (Nikkei Asia)

8. ‘800lb gorilla’: luxury brands battle China’s hit grey-market app (FT)

9. Huawei trifold phone’s resale frenzy cools shortly after launch (Nikkei Asia)

10. $1bn US battery plant plan shows race to reduce reliance on China (FT)

#techAsia is co-ordinated by Nikkei Asia’s Katherine Creel in Tokyo, with assistance from the FT tech desk in London. 

Sign up here at Nikkei Asia to receive #techAsia each week. The editorial team can be reached at techasia@nex.nikkei.co.jp

AJ Bell’s platform business has continued to grow, with customer numbers increasing by 66,000 to 542,000.

This represents an increase of 14% in the past year.

Its year-end trading update, published today (17 October), shows the total number of advised platform customers has increased by 12,000 to 171,000.

Meanwhile, the total number of D2C platform customers rose by 54,000 to 371,000, up 17% compared to last year.

Platform assets under administration (AUA) rose to a record £86.5bn, an increase of 22% from 2023.

Gross and net inflows across the platform were significantly higher than previous years too, which AJ Bell said was driven by improved retail investor confidence.

Gross inflows hit £13.1bn, up 41% versus 2023 (£9.3bn), while net inflows hit £6.1bn, up 45% compared to the previous year (£4.2bn)

However, despite storing performance across its platform business, AJ Bell saw net inflows into its investment business fall by £100m.

In both the advised and D2C markets, it recorded net inflows of £1.5bn, compared to £1.6bn the previous year.

Assets under management (AUM) in its investment business reached a record £6.8bn, up 45% from last year’s total of £4.7bn.

AJ Bell chief executive officer, Michael Summersgill, said: “I am pleased to report on another excellent year in which we have delivered impressive growth in customers and assets under administration.

“Our strategy is centered on our dual-channel platform which serves both the advised and D2C platform markets using a single technology platform and single operating model.

“This maximises our growth opportunity within the platform market, whilst being highly efficient to operate.

“Platform net inflows of over £6bn demonstrates the benefit of serving both markets, while our efficient model drives strong profitability, enabling continual reinvestment in the business to support our long-term growth ambitions.”

Summersgill believes AJ Bell’s performance is down to enhancing its propositions, improving brand awareness and lowering the cost of investing for customers.

He also said the firm had seen “a noticeable change” in both customer contributions to pensions and tax-free cash withdrawals.

While these behavioural changes do not have a material impact on AJ Bell’s business performance, Summersgill said they represent significant decisions for individual customers.

“We have therefore made representations to the Treasury calling for a commitment to a pension tax lock in the Budget, guaranteeing stability in key pension tax legislation for at least this parliament.”

Summersgill said that while the upcoming Budget has introduced “unhelpful uncertainty”, he “remains positive about the outlook for AJ Bell and the platform market more broadly.”

Rights groups say Israel appears to be implementing a controversial plan to force Hamas into submission by laying siege to the north of Gaza. BHP’s chief executive met government officials in South Africa last week, fuelling speculation that the miner will resurrect its failed bid for rival Anglo American. Plus, the downfall of once-hyped genetic testing company 23andMe, and Prada launches in to spacesuit design.

Mentioned in this podcast:

More than 100 killed in Nigeria fuel tanker explosion

Israel ‘starting to implement’ north Gaza starvation plan, say rights groups

BHP chief sparks fresh Anglo bid speculation after South Africa trip

Founder Anne Wojcicki races to rescue 23andMe

Prada launches into spacesuit design

The FT News Briefing is produced by Niamh Rowe, Fiona Symon, Sonja Hutson, Kasia Broussalian and Marc Filippino. Additional help from Breen Turner, Sam Giovinco, Peter Barber, Michael Lello, David da Silva and Gavin Kallmann. Our engineer is Joseph Salcedo. Topher Forhecz is the FT’s executive producer. The FT’s global head of audio is Cheryl Brumley. The show’s theme song is by Metaphor Music.

Read a transcript of this episode on FT.com

View our accessibility guide.

I have recently been spending a lot of time thinking about my business and what’s next for us.

We’ve had a really good few years, from a growth perspective. We’ve integrated one acquisition and we’re looking at one or two others. We are in an objectively good shape.

However, as the firm grows and more advisers join the team, we need to find a way to continue to build and for the business to be able to sustain itself.

When we set up, it was mainly my own connections and relationships that generated new clients. But that’s probably not enough now. The old adage of, ‘What got us here won’t get us there,’ feels apt.

We must do what fits for us. And why shouldn’t it be something we enjoy doing?

And so to marketing.

It feels as if there are a million and one resources, from a financial services marketing perspective.

From podcasts by industry experts, marketing specialists, SEO companies and consultants galore, to other advisers promoting what they do on LinkedIn and/or X (formerly Twitter), it’s a minefield when determining who to follow and which options are best.

I have thought a lot about which approaches to explore and from whom to take inspiration. So many good people are providing really excellent, free content.

However, I chose to come away from all of that ‘stuff’. I went back to basics. I started thinking about my business, my life, what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it.

We decided to go to our best introducers and best clients and ask them what they, their peers, their colleagues and their friends might be interested in

Why? Well, while no doubt good, all the information out there is pretty generic. There can be basic guides for what can work or what has worked for other people, sure. However, these aren’t specific to me, to my business and to what I want to do with my time.

Actual people

So, I went back to thinking about what had brought people to my company and what had made them stay. Also, what I enjoyed in terms of marketing and what I didn’t.

As business owners, we get to choose these things. I don’t want to be ruled by the business — I want to rule it. This led me to AP — actual people.

Forget AI; AP is where it’s at. I like people. I like speaking with them, learning their stories, hearing what challenges they have and thinking through the options to overcome them.

What is working already? What feels comfortable to you? What can you do often and sustainably

I realised, if we’re a business that people join and stay with because of the human connection, why don’t we do things that encourage more human connections?

We decided to go to our best introducers and best clients and ask them what they, their peers, their colleagues and their friends might be interested in.

These people are already advocates of ours. They get it, they get us.

I understand why writing social-media posts or creating a podcast (I had one of those) and other digital content is useful for marketing. However, those things aren’t what define us.

I don’t like the peer pressure about what you need to do, marketing-wise. We must do what fits for us. Yes, we’d like it to work but why shouldn’t it be something we enjoy doing? Something authentic and sustainable.

We will monitor the results — who came in as clients and what work came from it. That’s the analytics we can review.

Gauging feedback

Our marketing to-do list was relatively long to start with but we decided to refine it to three or four projects initially and gauge feedback from there.

None of these are revolutionary, either. Sorry if you thought I was going to give you the key to loads of new business.

We’re starting with a wine-tasting evening local to a number of our clients with a local wine-production company we know.

We’re doing an evening at a high-end watch retailer with a number of sports and entrepreneur clients with a big interest in watches.

I started thinking about my business, my life, what I wanted to do and how I wanted to do it

We have seminars arranged, reviewing pensions and inheritance tax planning.

And we’re planning an event with our charity partner, Spread a Smile, to show our clients what we do as a business for them.

We will ask introducers to bring potential clients and we will ask clients to bring like-minded individuals.

I will update on how this has gone over the next year or so, but the main point of this column was to remind other business owners and advisers to think through what their marketing looks like.

What is working already? What feels comfortable to you? What can you do often and sustainably, and enjoy rather than endure? Good luck.

Sam Sloma is managing director of Engage Financial Services

This article featured in the October 2024 edition of Money Marketing. 

If you would like to subscribe to the monthly magazine, please click here.