Performance at Month End

Mercury World Mining Trust PLC
6 October 2000


MERCURY WORLD MINING TRUST plc
All information is at 29th September 2000 and unaudited.
Performance at month end with net income reinvested
                           One     Three     One     Three     Five  
                         Month    Months    Year     Years     Years     
Net asset value          -10.6%      3.5%    2.5%      7.1%      5.1%        
Share price               -1.3%     13.6%    3.6%     11.9%      6.5%         
HSBC Global Mining
 Index (Capital Only)     -9.6%     -1.3%   -5.2%    -11.0%    -19.6%       

At month end              
Net asset value 103.54p    including current year net revenue of 1.61p
Share price:     91.75p    Discount to NAV:                     11.4%
                           Net yield:                            1.3%
Total assets:  £201.3m
Gearing:         13.5%  
Ordinary shares in issue:  172,193,803
(9,506,049 shares were repurchased during the month).

Sector                 % Total   Country               % Total
Analysis                Assets   Analysis               Assets
Base Metals               28.2   South Africa             36.6
Diversified               25.7   Europe                   15.9
Platinum                  16.7   Latin America            13.9
Gold                      16.6   Canada                   12.4
Silver/Diamonds            9.5   Australia                10.7
Industrial Minerals        3.1   USA                       9.9 
Net current assets         0.2   Africa                    0.4 
                                 Net current assets        0.2  
                         -----                           -----
                         100.0                           100.0
                         =====                           =====

Ten Largest Equity Investments
Company          % Investments   Country of Risk    
Impala Platinum            9.3   South Africa
De Beers Centenary         6.8   South Africa
Anglo American Platinum    5.8   South Africa
Minas Buenaventura         5.3   Peru
Cominco                    4.6   Canada
Vale Rio Doce              4.4   Brazil
Phelps Dodge               4.4   USA
Billiton                   4.2   UK
Gold Fields                3.7   South Africa
Alcoa                      3.4   USA
                          ----
Total                     51.9
                          ====

Commenting on the markets, Graham Birch, representing the Investment Manager
noted:
A rather volatile month in which the Trust's NAV slipped by 10.6%.  Although a
recovery in sterling played a part, the main trigger for this weakness was a
profit warning by Alcoa that it would undershoot third quarter earnings
estimates.  Some of the reasons for this warning were highly specific to
Alcoa, but that didn't stop the rest of the mining sector falling in sympathy.
  We have been carrying some gearing in the Trust and as a result, slipped
slightly behind our benchmark (down 9.6%).

Metal markets were rather mixed with gold down 1.3% and base metals up by
1.5%.  The base metals markets continued to shrug off the declining
inventories of metal - reflecting a certain amount of pessimism about economic
trends.

On the corporate news front we are pleased to note that Billiton won the
bidding war for Rio Algom without have to get too far into an 'auction' with
Noranda.  We took advantage of the accompanying Billiton fund raising to
increase our stake in the company.  

At the end of the month, Anglo told analysts that it was in favour of
unravelling the cross holding with De Beers.  This sent the De Beers share
price sharply higher and vindicated our decision to maintain an overweight
position in this stock.  It is still unclear how the unbundling of the cross
holding will be achieved and it will clearly take some time.

Disappointing news came from Goldfields which announced that it could not get
Reserve Bank approval for its proposed merger with Franco Nevada.  This leaves
Goldfields as something of a sitting duck and we would not be surprised if the
near future sees more corporate developments.

Currency markets are rather interesting at the moment and we are seeing
opportunities to switch out of US based assets and increase exposure to
Australian dollar based assets.  We anticipate seeing a number of currency
related earnings upgrades coming though from Australia as the year draws to a
close.

Sources: Merrill Lynch Investment Managers, HSBC Global Mining Index

Latest information is available by typing www.mlim.co.uk on the internet,
'MLIMINDEX' on Reuters, 'MLIM' on Bloomberg or '8800' on Topic 3 (ICV
terminal).