It has 22 markets

It has 22 markets.Many Ofex companies are not for the squeamish; some constituents feel obliged to issue wealth warnings in their prospectuses.Yet the fringe market has, so far, not encountered any disasters. A couple of companies are struggling to survive and there was the high- profile Skynet episode.The car security group's shares returned earlier this year following a pounds 1.7m cash- raising exercise. They had been suspended when a move to the Alternative Investment Market collapsed and the Securities and Futures Authority (SFA) started to investigate a rip-roaring performance which sent the shares surging from a 27.5p placing to 275p.Skynet, now much chastened, trades at 48p.Still, Ofex is bound to produce volatile share movements. Motion Media, developing video telephones, and Display IT are two active constituents.And last week Bestodds, offering a radio paging service for punters, jumped 1,300p to 4,300p on its debut.Mr Jenkins' company, JL Jenkins, owns Ofex and provides the market-making facility, dealing with Stock Exchange firms He keeps a tight grip on proceedings.

It is, of course, not difficult to get a company on to the fringe market but a vetting panel - accountant, solicitor, fund manager and banker - examine new arrivals.The growth of Ofex - and probably the Skynet misadventure - have prompted thoughts about defining and tightening up market conduct.A revised code of practice is being prepared. The new guidelines, soon to go through the consultative stage with market-users and companies involved asked for their observations, will, it is hoped, strengthen controls and add a little sophistication to what, in some quarters, is still seen as something of a maverick market on the lines of the old Vancouver exchange.If it continues to grow at its present rate more official and officious bodies may get involved. A share market with, say, 500 constituents may be regarded as too large to be ignored by the regulatory authorities.It would be ironic if Mr Jenkins one day found himself running a form of Ofex-cum-AIM, under the supervision of the Stock Exchange.It is surprising that the Ofex success has not prompted imitations. There is obviously a need for lightly regulated markets catering for old- established companies with long, or modest, shareholder registers, and start-up businesses needing access to money-raising facilities.Mr Jenkins' long career in the old 4.2 market gave him a shrewd insight into the needs of the companies the Stock Exchange decided to abandon.With so much of the securities industry now outside the control of the Stock Exchange it would not be surprising if attempts were made to bring Mr Jenkins' creation into the fold.There are already links; his market-making company is a Stock Exchange member and jobs in a range of shares traded on the official market.. One of Britain's leading property developers is set to cash in for a second time on the company that forced Barclays Bank to write-off a record pounds 200m, victim of the biggest-ever default on a property loan.

Martin Myers is planning to buy Imry, one of the best-known property developers to spring up in the late-1980s property boom, from Barclays, eight years after netting pounds 15m from its sale to a heavily indebted company backed by the bank. Barclays was left owning Imry after Marketchief, the company to which it lent pounds 200m at the peak of the last property cycle, collapsed. As well as the pounds 15m he made in 1989 when he and fellow developer Martin Landau sold Imry for pounds 314m to Marketchief, Mr Myers has struck a secret deal with the bank which will give him a further unspecified payout on the final unwinding of Imry, which he has managed throughout the various phases of its ownership. It is understood he will receive that incentive even if he himself is the ultimate buyer of the company.If Mr Myers is successful in his bid to buy what remains of Imry after the sale last month of most of its assets to Rodamco, a Dutch property company, he may stand to make a third fortune from the company if he is successful in building it up and selling or floating it on the stock market.The proposed deal would give Mr Myers control of a planned pounds 250m shopping centre development in Southampton, that has yet to be built, and an investment portfolio worth an estimated pounds 118m. Last month, Imry's other assets, including the Shires shopping centre in Leicester and Distillers House, an office block in Hammersmith, were sold to Rodamco for pounds 249m.Barclays, which has always made clear that it was only holding Imry for resale under the management of Mr Myers, was originally negotiating a sale of the whole of Imry to Rodamco, but Chris Bartram, head of the Dutch company's UK arm, pulled out only hours before the signing of final contracts.He is understood to have had second thoughts about the value of the Southampton development. Chelsfield, another potential buyer of Imry, also pulled out of negotiations after due diligence on the Southampton site.A Barclays spokesman would not comment on any incentive payments it plans to make to Mr Myers on the final disposal of Imry nor on whether it was negotiating a sale to him.

The bank simply said it was no longer in discussions with Rodamco, which was rumoured to have re-opened negotiations over the Imry assets it failed to buy last month.The imminent resolution of Barclays' Imry problem will bring to an end one of the bank's most embarrassing loans. When Imry was sold to Marketchief it was making profits of only pounds 22m but Barclays was prepared to lend pounds 200m to an acquisition vehicle that required upwards of pounds 50m a year simply to service its debts.When the assumptions on which Marketchief was premised - falling interest rates and rising asset values which would allow disposals to fund debt repayments - failed to materialise, the company went under. It had been set up with just pounds 5m of equity and more than pounds 300m of debt.Barclays was the most active bank in the fevered property lending market of the late 1980s, specialising in so-called relationship banking in which it backed such individuals as Gerald Ronson, of Heron International and Speyhawk's Trevor Osborne.. Dealers are bracing themselves for a day of turmoil on world stock markets after shares took a nerve-jangling tumble on Wall Street yesterday with investors continued to worry about continuing strength in the United States economy and the spectre of a long run of rising interest rates. By the close last night, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was off by a dizzying 157.11 points, or 2.3 per cent, at 6,583.48.

The fall, which computerised trading curbs failed to halt, came on the heels of the index's 140-point loss last Thursday. While some analysts continued to argue that the return of the bear to the Wall Street represented no more than the correction that many had been expected, others were sounding alarm bells. Any slippage beneath the psychologically-important 6,600 level could instil more generalised fears, if not investor panic.The story was similar across the markets. The technology-heavy Nasdaq exchange was also hurting badly yesterday - it was off more than 15 points at midday. Dealers are bracing themselves for volatile trading today after shares plunged again on Wall Street yesterday. Equities are expected to take their cue from a US market that returned from the shorter American Easter holiday as nervously as it had entered the break.After a 140-point fall last Thursday in New York, the Dow Jones index fell sharply in early trading yesterday as dealers banked on another rise in American interest rates following last week's quarter-point increase. The Dow was trading 107.64 points off at 6,632.95 in midday trading, having been 140.8 down at mid-morning.Shares were especially nervous ahead of economic data this week that could shape perceptions about inflation, interest rates and the stock market's future health.