Hume Capital Securities PLC Strategic Update (7343E)

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RNS Number : 7343E

Hume Capital Securities PLC

14 April 2014

14 April 2014

Hume Capital Securities plc ("Hume" or the "Company")

Strategic Update

With effect from today, the Company has made the decision to cease its market making activities in the short term. Despite the fact that market making has been profitable over the long term, the Company believes that its growth in other areas will generate higher returns for shareholders.

Whilst reviewing all its strategic options the Board believes that the Group's capital is employed most effectively through focussing on the corporate division and growing its assets under management. The Board stresses that this is a short term decision whilst the company takes advantage of new opportunities on offer.

The Board has looked carefully at where capital allocation will provide greatest shareholder value. We remain focused on capital markets and want to invest further in our proven corporate skills. We have also achieved considerable success in wealth management with the expected GBP130m fund won from Peterborough and other larger mandates in the pipeline. In addition, the launch of an onshore fund range has been received extremely positively by investors in both Asia and the UK. Further, the Company is looking at new areas of business on offer that will generate further annuity income streams for the group.

The interim results will be released before the end of May and early indications are that the results for the 6 months to February 2014 will show a significant improvement over the same period last year.

We are also expecting the second half of the year to continue with this upward trend backed up by a strong corporate pipeline, evidenced by today's listing of Haydale Graphene Industries plc, continuing to win assets under management and further cost savings which are starting to feed through to the bottom line.

Enquiries:

Hume Capital Securities plc

Nitin Parekh (Chief Executive Officer) 020 3693 1470

Grant Thornton UK LLP, Nominated Adviser

Philip Secrett /Melanie Frean/ Jamie Barklem 020 7383 5100

This information is provided by RNS

The company news service from the London Stock Exchange

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