Disposal

Artisan (UK) PLC 26 March 2002 Artisan (UK) plc ('Artisan' or the 'Company') Disposal of Speymill Contracts Limited Further to the Company's announcement on 1 February 2002 it has pleasure in further announcing the following corporate activity. The Company will now be able to recommence its share buy back programme. Disposal of Specialist Contracting Subsidiary The Board of Artisan is pleased to announce that they have today entered into a conditional agreement for the sale of their contracting company, Speymill Contracts Limited, to The Wigmore Group plc ('Wigmore'). The consideration for the sale of £4 million is to be satisfied by £700,000 in cash on completion and the assumption by Wigmore of inter-company loans to Artisan totalling £2.3 million. The balance of the consideration is to be satisfied by the issue to Artisan of a convertible loan note in Wigmore of £1 million. The loan note will attract interest payable quarterly of 2.5% per annum above the base rate at that time. Artisan shall be entitled to convert the Loan Note into ordinary shares in Wigmore at a convertible rate of 3p per share. Speymill is a specialist contractor working in the leisure and hotel sectors. Established in 1995, Speymill provides construction and property refurbishment services to the public house, restaurant, hotel and leisure groups and specialises in building, refurbishing licensed premises. Speymill whose asset value was £914,235 as at March 2001, made a profit before tax of £690,324 in the year to 31st March 2001 on turnover of £16,325,874. For the nine months ended 31st December 2001, Speymill's profit on ordinary activities before taxation was £601,245 on turnover £12,659,952. Artisan will use the proceeds from the sale of Speymill as working capital in its core activities of residential and commercial property development. The sale is conditional on the approval at the general meeting of Wigmore shareholders to the transaction and on the admission of the new Wigmore shares, issued as a result of the fundraising exercise, to trading on AIM. Alan Brookes, who is the Operations Director for Speymill at Artisan will be appointed to the Board of Wigmore and as a consequence of the disposal will resign from the Board of Artisan on completion of the transaction. The Board of Artisan continues to review its strategic objectives and will contact shareholders again in the near future. S Dean CHAIRMAN This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
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