Director/PDMR Shareholding

Ashtead Group plc

20 October 2011

                               ASHTEAD GROUP PLC                               

                          Director / PDMR Shareholder                          

Ashtead Group plc ("the Company") announces that the awards made to its
executive directors in October 2008 under the Company's Performance Share Plan
partially vested on 13 October 2011. As a result each director received the net
number of vested shares shown in the table below, together with their total
shareholding:-

Director            Net shares        Total number of      % of issued shares  
                    received          shares held                              
                                                                               
Geoff Drabble       286,742           698,099              0.14                
                                                                               
Ian Robson          137,292           1,714,326            0.34                
                                                                               
Sat Dhaiwal         92,227            458,076              0.09                
                                                                               
Brendan Horgan      89,247            310,775              0.06                

The net number of shares vested and retained by the directors is after selling
sufficient shares in order to fund the income and employment taxes payable on
the vesting of the award. Each director sold these shares on 19 October 2011 at
159.8p per share and the number of shares sold was G Drabble 310,638, I Robson
148,734, S Dhaiwal 99,913 and B Horgan 55,753.