After nearly two decades of interviewing executives from businesses across the market cap scale from minnows to FTSE 100 firms you get a sense when someone is looking to ramp up their prospects beyond any level of credibility to inflate their share price and when someone is prepared to let the story speak for itself.

There’s nothing wrong with being an enthusiastic advocate for your business but typically it is those companies whose leaders adopt an understated approach which thrive – under-promising and over-delivering being a key component of the successful management of a public company.

One interviewee I’ve found refreshingly free of any artifice is John Morgan, chief executive of construction group Morgan Sindall (MGNS). Morgan co-founded Morgan Lovell in 1977 which then merged with William Sindall in 1994 to form today’s entity.

Morgan’s answers are always short and to the point, its results are largely free from the adjustments which litter other company’s numbers, and interestingly the group almost entirely eschews M&A in favour of pursuing organic growth. Bolt-on acquisitions can be part of a firm’s toolkit but if a company can grow organically without recourse to lots of deals then its generally an encouraging sign.

Growth certainly hasn’t been a problem for Morgan Sindall, which has more than doubled its revenue over the last 10 years and delivered a seven-and-a-half-fold increase in pre-tax profit.

Apart from the fit-out business, which has relatively limited visibility, the other parts of the group benefit from long-term contractual relationships which make their revenue streams fairly predictable.

Having highlighted the shares in last week’s big feature on mid caps, it was gratifying to see Morgan Sindall serve up such a peach of a trading update on 17 June.  

The stock hit new all-time highs as the firm flagged continuing strength in trading for the fit-out arm and a better-than-anticipated showing for its construction operations with profit expected to ‘significantly’ beat full-year forecasts.

It’s birthday time for the UK’s junior market AIM – which as it turns 30 seems to be enduring the relatively recently recognised phenomenon of a ‘quarter-life crisis’.

That said there are still plenty of excellent businesses to be found and Shares has identified a quartet of names worthy of your attention in our cover piece this week.

We’ve also talked to current AIM directors and a small-cap fund manager to get a broader sense of how the market’s problems might be addressed.

Finally, congratulations to Chris Bromby who was first out of the hat in our competition to win a copy of The Meaningful Money Retirement Guide. Thanks to everyone who entered.

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