City Equities Ltd and/or Beaufort Securities Ltd

Hi, While Beaufort might be legit, having been with them and taken their advisory service over the years, all I can say is it is awful. On the last few transactions where I have been recommended to sell and buy, the only person to make any money is clearly Beaufort, the sold company invariably goes up, the bought one goes down. The advice - when my advisor was replaced, was sell everything and re-invest in one, but I said that the cost of selling everything, lots of small cap investments that had lost me loads of money thanks to their awful advice would leave me with virtually nothing to invest, the advice came straight back.. I recommend you sit on everything and wait for it to recover.
An example, following their advice, I had 1000 shares in ARM, they said it was about to go down and I should sell and wait for it to go up, foolishly and against my better judgement I did, two weeks later, ARM having gone up I was advised to buy ARM, so, thanks to their help I have gone from 1000 to slightly over 900 shares! Don't ask me about INFINIS which has just gone down and down, same with Barclays all strong buy recommendations from Beaufort.
Yes, of course shares go down as well as up, but I expect the experts to do slightly better than flipping a coin, certainly better than had I consistently done the opposite - I would be well off had I done so!

I know this is an old thread, but I thought I'd add my 2cents, as I work in the stockbroking/ investment management sector.

City Equities and Beaufort Securities (which took over Hoodless Brennan (itself re-branded to HB Markets, presumably because of the reputation it had built up - google 'Hoodless Brennan cold calling' and you'll see what I mean)) are both what's referred to in the trade as 'spank shops'. They flog shares, their brokers are paid mostly commission; they are not in the business of building you a portfolio.

Beaufort is FCA registered, and City Equities was FCA registered when it was in existence. To be clear, that does not mean they are/ were reputable firms. It should do, but it doesn't. I've even checked on the FCA register - one firm was setup by two guys who'd worked at a spank shop for a year at most (which was later shut down), and then they were allowed to start their own firm at the grand old of age of about 26, with no experience! It really does beggar belief.

Beaufort since taking over Hoodless Brennan at first glance seems to have become more professional, but it still has the same people working there, who are probably still remunerated on the same terms. And if they're still cold calling or emailing people, well that says it all.

The FCA and the FSA before it allowed some very unscrupulous firms to oprerate, cold calling clients, with very sharp sales practices (ironic when you consider how difficult they have made life for reputable firms). Often they only invested in AIM shares, and were driven by commission, often destroying little old ladies' share portfolios in the process. Total scumbags in almost anyone's book.

Thankfully following the Retail Distribution Review, the number of these firms have dwindled, but they're still out there. Nowadays, they tend to focus on CFDs, or foreign exchange rather than AIM; some are totally unregulated and will try and flog you things like timber or commodities (often they don't own what they're purporting to sell).

In short: never invest money with someone who has cold called you, or otherwise contacted you out of the blue - reputable firms don't do this in the UK. Sadly being FCA registered doesn't guarantee that a firm is reputable.