Appointments and Statement

RNS Number : 5065T

Worthington Group PLC

06 October 2014

 



Worthington Group plc ("the Company" or "Worthington")

6^nd October2014

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Senior Appointments to Worthington Group plc and Statement regarding CPS Energy Resources Plc.

Worthington is pleased to announce two key appointments to the Company's acquisition team tasked with accelerating the Company's acquisition and investment programme, and helping to fulfil the Company's key strategic objective to become a major diversified international investment company.   

Doug Ware, the CEO of the Company said today, "I am delighted to announce these appointments to our acquisition team. This is the first step in our plans to build a world class team capable of turning Worthington into a substantial international investment company and further appointments will be made in due course." 

The appointments are: 

David Winduss BSc ACA, as head of acquisitions. 

David is a proven financial executive with broad commercial experience, after qualifying at Ernst & Young, David moved to Hanson Industries as a financial controller. Further appointments have been:

·     Financial roles at Tarmac and National Power.

·     Group Financial Controller at Bidcorp plc, a rapidly growing multi-site property, shipping and distribution company. After a stint turning round one of their loss making businesses, he also handled the sale of a subsidiary before being appointed to the main board. His responsibilities included: property planning and management, acquisitions (including listed companies) and disposals. Since leaving Bidcorp, David has pursued an investment career and he now believes the time is right to re-enter the public company arena, his firm belief is that his experience with Hanson and Bidcorp will enable him to assist Worthington to make progressively larger corporate transactions. 

Oleg-Serguei Schkoda, as head of the Worthington oil and gas team.

Oleg served as Vice President of Exploration & Project Management at Simba Energy Inc. He has served as Vice President of Cougar Drilling Solutions. With an international Oil & Gas career spanning more than 18 years, Oleg has considerable experience working with service companies as well as exploration and production groups. Operationally, his most significant postings have been with companies such as Baker Hughes, General Electric and Schlumberger in South East Asia, the United States, and continental Europe.

Over recent years, at an executive level, Oleg has contributed a combination of skills including acquisition and divestiture and other financial aspects of Oil & Gas to the operational, manufacturing and drilling sectors of the industry. Oleg has developed an extensive network around the globe, and is capable of working in several languages, he has also worked extensively in Africa. He first worked as a reservoir engineer for Petrofina's (now part of Total) exploration department. Oleg holds a master's degree in petroleum engineering from the IFP in Paris (French Institute of Petroleum), as well as a master's degree in petroleum geology from ENSG (Ecole Nationale Superieure de Geologie Nancy, France). He also holds a Masters degree in Mining Exploitation. His further extensive appointments have included:

·     Member of Board of Advisors of RFID Oil & Gas Solution Group, LLC.

·     Director of Brandenburg Energy Corp.

·     Vice President - Congo Licenses Manager- Panoro Energy, London.

·     Chief Marketing Officer - GEO Dynamics Inc, Houston, Texas.

·     Chief Executive Officer - Enertag Sas - Paris - France - Houston, Texas. 

Today Oleg offers consultancy services focusing on Africa and Middle East exploration programs (Oilfield Strategic Solutions), supporting small and mid-cap E&P companies working towards production and development. He has considerable experience in many different geographic locations including Nigeria and Dubai.  

Welcoming these appointments, Mr Ware added: "In addition to adding considerable worldwide acquisition experience to the Company, these appointments will assist  Worthington to not only complete the pipeline of existing acquisition opportunities, but also to increase the Company's future deal-flow as David and Oleg both have considerable contacts world-wide in our areas of investment focus." 

Statement regarding  CPS Energy Resources Plc ("CPS") 

On 2^nd October 2014, the Company announced that it expected to make a £12.5m investment in CPS Energy Resources Plc, the oil and gas exploration company working in partnership  with Oando Plc. In that announcement the Company said:

"Worthington will subscribe for GBP 12.5m of new CPS ordinary shares at a price that equates to 27.5% of the agreed likely stock market value of CPS (i.e. a discount of 72.5%) when, as expected, it lists in 2015. Worthington is, inter alia, currently reviewing comparable listed companies in order to agree this discounted valuation prior to investing".

This means that, prior to investing, Worthington needs to be satisfied that the expected value of CPS on listing will result in a gain of more than £30m to Worthington. The final decision to invest, in the light of the comparable valuations, will be taken by Worthington in association with the German and Swiss institutional investors who are funding the purchase.  

 About Worthington Group Plc ("Worthington") 

Worthington (Stock Exchange LSE: WRN) is a British investment company that  celebrates its 60th anniversary as a London Stock Exchange main market listed company this year. The company has four areas of investment focus: property, litigation claims, new economy and emerging markets. The Company believes that exceptional shareholder returns can be achieved by utilising its main market Sterling paper to acquire investments in these sectors worldwide.

Note: Forward-looking statements contained in this announcement, including Worthington's strategy and plans, as well as expectations for future revenue and earnings, reflect Worthington's   current views and assumptions with respect to future events and are subject to certain risks, uncertainties and assumptions. There are many factors that may cause actual results achieved to differ materially from expectations for future results and expectations that may be expressed in or form an assumption of such forward-looking statements. Such factors include risks related to the day to day business of Worthington, client volatility, sales fluctuations, the general economic climate, political and environment and  other risks,  cancellations,  software failures and interruption to service to customers due to technical problems, acquisition delays  and failure as well as other uncertainties related to the results of Worthington including risks of delays or closure of projects, price falls, currency fluctuations and changes in contract terms, legislation and administrative practices, as well as competition risk and other unforeseen factors. If one or more of such risks or factors of uncertainty were to materialise, or should one or more of the statements provided prove to be incorrect, actual developments may differ materially from the forward-looking statements contained in this announcement.

 Enquiries:

Charlotte Parham, Media information                           Tel: [phone]

Or email: [e-mail]

PD Cosec - Company Secretary                                        Tel: [phone]

Website: www.worthingtongroupplc.com

Statement ends.

 

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