London Stock Exchange Monthly Market Report For December 2001 - December UK Trading Volumes Up 22 % Year On Year - 17 IPOs On Aim In December

In December, trading volumes across the London Stock Exchange's markets continued their strong record of growth:

• 40.8 billion UK shares were traded in December, up 22 per cent on December 2000.
• The number of trades in UK shares was also up 22 per cent on the same month in 2000, rising from 1.89 million trades to 2.29 million trades.

The success of SETSTM, the Exchange's electronic order book that has underpinned the growth in trades over the course of 2001, continued in December with 1.3 million trades against 0.7 million trades for the same month in 2000. Year on year, this represented an 89 per cent increase.

There were 36 new issues during December 2001, 26 of which were IPOs. A total of 304 companies were admitted to the Exchange's markets in 2001, including 155 IPOs. Although lower in absolute numbers than the exceptional levels of 2000 (487 new admissions in 2000), these represented 60 per cent of the total western European IPO market.

The IPO market has been driven by the growth of AIMTM, the Exchange's global market for smaller and growing companies, which attracted 17 IPOs in December 2001, raising £53m between them. With 94 IPOs in 2001, AIM alone accounted for approximately one third of western European IPOs, bucking the global trend of slower IPO markets.

On 14 December 2001, 5 IPOs were admitted to the AIM market - a record for one day. AIM is firmly established as a success story in the UK and the Exchange is increasingly promoting AIM overseas, with further interest from companies and advisors in Europe, Israel, Canada and Australia. By the end of 2001, the total number of companies on AIM stood at 629 including 42 international companies.