PLUS reported 71,315 trades, valued at £ 420.06 million, representing a volume of 800.46 million shares traded on the PLUS platform, sustaining its strong trading since the start of the year.

"We're pleased to see robust first quarter trading activity. Our performance is showing solid consistency and we're committed to building our trading service offering ahead of MiFID", said Business Development Director Cyril Theret.

PLUS originally launched its extended trading platform in December 2005. Since then, it has displayed a steady growth in trading activity. Last year, over half a million trades, worth a total of nearly £3 billion, representing over 5.75 billion shares, took place on PLUS rather than on traditional exchanges.

More recently, PLUS saw an increase in market share in the AIM and FTSE Fledgling securities traded on its platform. In February this year, almost 40% of the trades in those AIM companies traded on the PLUS platform took place on PLUS. For the month of March, PLUS reached a daily high of 56% market share in FTSE Fledgling trading by number of shares.

There are over 850 small and mid-cap companies now trading on the PLUS market, circa 660 of which are PLUS-traded with their listing or quotation on other London markets, and nearly 200 are PLUS-quoted with their listing on the PLUS primary market. The combined market capitalisation of the PLUS market now exceeds £150 billion.