Placing & Admission to AIM

Vane Holdings PLC 02 June 2004 VANE Holdings plc Placing and Admission to Trading on AIM VANE Holdings plc ('VANE' or 'the Company'), a mineral exploration and development company, began its first day of trading today on the AIM. The Company has raised £3.705m via a placing at 11p per share and at the placing price has a market capitalisation of approximately £16.07m. Seymour Pierce is acting as both nominated adviser and broker. Admission and Placing Statistics: Placing price 11p Number of existing Ordinary Shares 112,462,000 Number of Placing Shares 33,681,823 Placing Shares as a percentage of enlarged issued share capital 23.05% Number of Ordinary Shares in issue on Admission 146,143,823 Estimated net proceeds of the Placing to be received by the Company £3,191,000 Market capitalisation following the Placing at the Placing Price £16,075,820 VANE is focused on defining and developing prospective mineral projects and benefits from a highly qualified and experienced management team with a proven track record in exploration and development. The Company is ideally placed to capitalise on project acquisition opportunities, as it has negotiated access to a 7,000+ file global exploration database, excluding Indonesia, from US mining group Freeport-McMoRan, one of the world's largest producers of copper and gold. To date approximately 75% of Freeport's files have been reviewed and several exciting potential prospects have been identified and an option over mineral rights at a property in Guadalcazar, Mexico, has been obtained. Guadalcazar is an early stage exploration property consisting of a large newly recognised hydrothermal gold system having the potential to define a large gold deposit. Revenues from the Company's other project, Diablito, are expected to help fund the development of Guadalcazar and other exploration projects, thereby creating an exploration company with cash flow. VANE owns 100% of the mineral rights to the Diablito Project. Diablito is an advanced high-grade precious metal vein deposit located in the State of Nayarit, west-central Mexico, containing economic values of gold and silver. VANE plans to put the Diablito prospect into production within 6 months in order to finance exploration costs elsewhere. The Directors believe that the simplicity of the mining process, and the Company's ability to vary the production rate, makes this an achievable objective. VANE was co-founded by CEO Steven Van Nort, who was previously Senior Vice-President of exploration-metals at Freeport McMoRan until 2000. The Board also includes L. Clark Arnold as Director of Geology, who participated in the development and implementation of a statistically based method of porphyry copper prospecting which eventually led to two major discoveries: The Escondida mine in Chile, believed to be the world's largest copper deposit, and the Santa Cruz deposit in Arizona. Matthew Idiens, formerly a Fund Manager for Laing and Cruickshank Investment Management, is an Executive Director and Robert Jeffcock, who brings many years' of experience raising funds within the resources sector, and David Ingmire are Non-Executive Directors. The Non-Executive Chairman is Michael Spriggs, who has 27 years of mining sector experience having worked as an exploration geologist for Anglo American, Falconbridge and Rio Tinto before joining the SG Warburg mining team. Steven Van Nort, CEO of VANE, comments 'We believe that VANE offers the upside of an exploration company, with the comfort that we will be generating cash flow from our first producing asset in the near term. The placing has enabled us to raise money in order to bring Diablito into production, which will help us to capitalise on some of the other exciting opportunities that are currently under review.' - Ends - For further information, please contact: VANE Holdings plc Seymour Pierce Parkgreen Communications Matthew C. Idiens Jonathan Guy/Jeremy Porter Justine Howarth/Cathy Malins +44 20 7223 3461 +44 20 7107 8000 +44 20 7493 3713 www.VANEminerals.com This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
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