Online clothing retailer ASOS (LON:ASC)appears to be in recovery mode as AIM’s biggest stock by market cap gained 30% to £28.21 per share.
The rally helped lift the FTSE AIM 100 up 3% for the week to stand at 3,385 at midday on Friday.
It has been a busy week at David Lenigas Towers with the AIM deal maker’s comings and goings guiding the prices of a number of shares.
He caught many investors off guard retiring his chairmanship of eponymous Trinidad oil producer Leni Gas & Oil (LON:LGO) - which will be imaginatively renamed LGO Plc - and is also leaving Polemos (LON:PLMO).
Shares in the former remained steady as the oil firm continues to push production towards the 1,000 barrel per day level – likely to arrive by around mid-September. Polemos, meanwhile, shed a third of its value before rebounding somewhat on Friday.
Lenigas, the multi-company chairman, and a veritable celebrity in some corners of AIM, told his 3,700 Twitter followers: "I have stepped down from LGO to put the big lads in charge. Time to take LGO to the next level."
Meanwhile, another tweet reads: “I HAVE THREE THINGS that I need to rock-n-roll on in the next 3-4 weeks.”
Lenigas said through this stream of social chatter that his focus was on ventures such as AfriAg (LON:AFR), projects in Mexico and the Horse Hill oil exploration venture near Gatwick airport.
AfriAg itself also had a good week, rising as much as 58% after announcing the first shipment by its newly installed marketing unit - which is distributing African fish to China.
The latter may have some added resonance this morning, what with Lenigas’s unveiling as the new executive chairman of AIM cash-shell Evocutis (LON:EVO), a remnant of a medical tech firm, which saw the shares shoot 200% higher.
Evocutis is getting a £210,000 cash injection and whilst no specific details were given about potential deals, the company will have the stated remit of investing in European natural resource projects.
Elsewhere, Gulf Keystone Petroleum (LON:GKP), which like LGO lost its own founder recently, further spooked investors as it warned that the conflict in Iraq may mean missed production targets.
Although it repeated that ongoing production and export trucking operations in the semi-autonomous Kurdistan region have not been interrupted in any material way, expansion plans have been affected.
The oil company needs to bring online three additional production wells to hit its 40,000 barrel per day ‘exit’ rate for 2014. But, because of a lack of international contractors this threshold may not be reached until the first quarter of 2015.
Another energy firm, Circle Oil (LON:COP), did very well with its shares growing by about 40% with a new discovery offshore Tunisia.
Circle said that findings of the El Mediouni well, or EMD-1, were exactly as prognosed prior to drilling, and it is estimated the new discovery could contain around 100mln barrels of oil.
Another of the week’s big winners was TyraTech (LON:TYR), which has agreements to stock its Vamousse head lice mousse and shampoo with two more blue-chip British retailers.
Grocers Tesco and Sainsbury will join Boots and Superdrug in stocking the breakthrough new products when they hit the shelves in the UK next month. The roll-out will be supported by a nationwide advertising campaign to coincide with the new school year.
In the small cap mining sector there was plenty of attention on Spanish mine developer EMED (LON:EMED), which is being bought up by two of its major shareholders. In the past week regulatory announcements have revealed that EMED’s Chinese financier has increased its stake to 14.34%, whilst commodity trading giant Trafigura lifted its holding to 18.04%.
Trafigura has mining and processing operations near Rio Tinto. And while it has been touted as a potential buyer of the project, it has always said it holds EMED stock for investment purposes.