Shares in the Birmingham stockbroker Arden Partners closed at 1721/2p at the end of their first day of trading on the AIM market yesterday, valuing the company at £42.5 million and a 101/2p premium over the price at which 1.86 million shares had been placed with institutions.

Thirteen founder directors raised £12.4 million between them by selling shares in the placing. None of them liquidated his holding altogether, a spokesman said.

Neither Sir David Rowe-Ham, Arden's chairman, nor Tony Bartlett, chief executive, sold any shares.

The company raised another £3 million - before expenses of £800,000 - to boost its working capital. The "free float" now in the market represents 38.5 per cent of Arden's equity.

Founded in November, 2002, by analysts and institutional sales specialists who had worked together for some 15 years at Albert E Sharp Securities, and then at Old Mutual Securities, Arden is a research-led institutional and corporate broker.

It now acts for 33 companies with a combined value of £3.7 billion, 22 of them trading on AIM and the other 11 with full market listings.

In the year to last October, Arden raised £82.4 million for clients from initial public offering and £87.6 million in other fund-raisings - 13 transactions. That was followed by £77.6 million in six deals this year, up to the end of April.

Arden has some 160 institutional clients and says it is developing relations with an increasing number of hedge funds.