Holding(s) in Company

The Company has been notified today for the purposes of Part VI of the
Companies Act 1985 that as at 14 May 2003 the Railways Pension Trustee Company
Limited has a notifiable interest in 2,946,475 shares, which represents 6.15%
of the issued share capital of Oxford Instruments plc.

The Railways Pension Trustee Company Limited invests through a number of fund
managers and monitors their aggregate shareholdings on a daily basis. They have
recently discovered that one of their fund managers has been reporting such
notification to Oxford Instruments plc independently and as such these holdings
had inadvertently been omitted from their aggregate holdings.

The shares to which this notification relates are registered as follows:

                Registered Holder                        Number of Shares      
                                                                               
             LENS Investors (UK) LLC                        2,354,475          
                                                                               
          Network Nominees (Two) Limited                     592,000           

LENS Investors is a limited partnership. As a limited partner the Railways
Pension Trustee Company Limited is treated for disclosure purposes as having an
interest equal to the entire holding.

Network Nominees (Two) Limited is a wholly owned subsidiary of Railways Pension
Trustee Company Limited, which is Trustee to the Railways Pension Funds. It
holds shares in its name at the request of the Railways Pension Trustee Company
Limited.