Have a US broker account, can I buy UK shares?

[sadie]

I have some US tech shares and a small amount of cash doing 'nothing' from a job I had years ago. They are held in a US account Morgan Stanley.
Can I use this account to buy UK shares - the shares I want are listed on the AIM (what is this?) not the FTSE. I asked another US online trader company and they said they could UK shares for me if the company had an American Registration Deposit or somesuch...

Or if I want UK shares have I to have an Irish or UK account or how does it work?

It just seems to make sense to use the US account already set up rather than have to get cash to set up another account.

 

[Brendan Burgess]

An ADR is an American Depository Receipt "The stock of many non-U.S. companies trade on U.S. stock exchanges through the use of ADRs. ADRs are denominated, and pay dividends, in U.S. dollars, and may be traded like shares of stock of U.S.-domiciled companies."

AIM is the Alternative Investment Market and the companies would usually be smaller than those in the official list, so they are unlikely to have ADRs.

Even if they had, I am not sure if it's a good idea for an Irish citizen, to hold sterling shares in US$. I suspect a lot of returns would get frittered away in tranaction and currency charges.

Any Irish broker should be able to buy you AIM shares and this would be the simplest way of doing it.