Niche Group is ‘raising its game’. The AIM-quoted company chaired by colourful ex-Durlacher broking boss Christopher Stainforth, which takes pre-float stakes in other candidates for the junior stock market, wants to tap the market for more money to achieve its goals.

Chief executive Nicholas Greenstone, a former senior partner of City law firm Fladgate Fielder and head of shell group Matisse Holdings, says that Niche, which recently made a 215 per cent turn on Irish AIM float Ely Property, ‘will raise more money’ to back its hunches. Trading itself at a depressed 0.75p, Niche currently has two more float candidates in the wings, but ‘never has enough money to do what it wants’, he grumbles.

John East is broker to Niche, whose chairman Stainforth made his name as a heavy-hitting City corporate financier at UBS Phillips & Drew before being charged – and acquitted and exonerated – for his role in the 1980s Blue Arrow share issue scandal. Stainforth was later an aggressive head of Durlacher before its takeover by Panmure Gordon.

He complements Greenstone, who left Fladgate Fielder two years ago ‘because I envied the fees corporate financiers were making and decided to jump the fence’. Greenstone was ‘not involved’ when the law firm had the misfortune to be adviser in all good faith to Orb Estates, which later became part of a Serious Fraud Squad inquiry into the apparent theft of £30 million from e-commerce flop Izodia.

‘I personally invest in the companies Niche Group backs,’ says Greenstone. ‘There is a lot of variety and, if you get it right, you can make lots of money.’