LONDON (Alliance News) - New World Oil and Gas PLC Tuesday said it has received only a small amount of acceptances from its open offer announced in June, but its placing agent secured commitments for a substantial amount of clawback shares.
However, the company warned it may not be enough to restore the company's shares to trading on AIM.
On June 11, the company said it intended to raise up to GBP3.5 million by way of a placing and open offer of 3.88 billion shares.
As of Monday, New World said it had received acceptances from shareholders for only 581.2 million open offer shares, representing only 14.94% of the shares on offer.
However, the placing agent Cornhill Capital has received commitments from "certain persons" for the remaining shares. Those clawback shares are subject to the rights of clawback by eligible shareholders under the open offer and accordingly 3.30 billion new shares, representing the remaining 85.06% of available shares being issued, it said.
New World said the placing and open offer are not conditional on the company's shares being restored to trading after being suspended earlier this year.
"Restoration is not expected to take place until historic settlement issues in the ordinary shares have improved to enable orderly trading," said New World.
Those historic issues relate back to previous placings and open offers whereby certain investors did not receive the shares purchased, causing confusion over the size of stakes held in the company after shareholders rejected a previously proposed GBP1.5 million placing in May.
That rejected placing had been plagued by confusion over the size of shareholdings in the company, including those of Judith Williams and her son and of Metal Tiger PLC.
"Whilst the company intends the placing and open offer to improve the settlement issues, there is no guarantee that this will be sufficient to enable restoration," New World added.
After the new shares have been admitted, New World will have a total of 4.59 billion shares in issue.
By Joshua Warner; joshuawarner@alliancenews.com; @JoshAlliance
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