A recent Reuters survey of smaller British companies highlights that it is not just Irish smaller companies that are facing problems.

According to Reuters, more than half all broker analysts (and almost as many fund managers) believe that share prices do not reflect value. An even higher percentage, along with 77 per cent of small company finance directors, believes the markets do not provide sufficient liquidity.

This lack of interest in smaller companies and the associated low valuations assigned to these companies, resulted in twice as many small companies being delisted as joined the UK stock market in the first five months of the year.

An early reversal in these trends seems unlikely and it could well be that it will take a large increase in private investor interest to inject fresh liquidity into these shares.