There are calls for Aim companies that fail to set up a website to be suspended. Under new London Stock Exchange (LSE) rules, every Aim company must post key information on a website by 20 August.

But as the deadline approaches it has become clear many of Aim’s smaller companies will not be ready. In April, a survey by investor relations advisor Ir26 found 422 Aim companies did not even have a website.

Now John Pierce, chief executive of the Quoted Companies Alliance (QCA), an influential group representing small and mid-cap companies, wants tough action to protect Aim’s reputation and is calling on the LSE to suspend companies that fail to get online.

‘First give them another month and then take them off the market,’ says Pierce, adding: ‘You can’t have rules and not back them up with some sort of censure. There is no point mucking around with fines if the companies can’t be bothered.’

Pierce says it is particularly important for the LSE to take tough action to show Aim’s critics that it is serious about ‘disciplining the market’ and says he ‘gathers it [the LSE] is going to take a stern view’.

While its relaxed listing rules have meant Aim has attracted hundreds of new companies, protection for investors has been slammed. In March an official from US regulator the SEC described Aim as a ‘casino’ where a third of companies fail.

Pierce’s comments come after the QCA last week posted a new guide out to Aim companies giving them advice on how to set up a website. This was sent to all the market’s UK-domiciled companies and their financial advisers who, under the LSE’s Aim regulatory framework, are responsible for companies’ behaviour.