The low liquidity showed in the evolution of Alternative Markets for expanding firms has caused a great concern among practitioners. The debate arises: Is it this lack of liquidity a market maturity matter? Would liquidity arise itself with more companies going public and more investors trading? In order to answer these questions and better understand the liquidity phenomenon, we have applied a multivariate analysis over the shares of the listed companies at the Alternative Investment Market (AIM) of London Stock Exchange (LSE), which is considered the most developed alternative market all over the world. We have analyzed the evolution of the Turnover ratio in about 300 companies during five years following their Initial Public Offering (IPO). The results show that, although for most of the shares the turnover is not very high, a liquidity improvement occurs as time since IPO increases. This, lead us to consider that life cycle is influencing the liquidity of the expanding companies in the alternative market.

Keywords: Liquidez, AIM, Análisis Multivariante, Pymes
JEL Codes: G12, G15, G32