AVM.L Regulatory News (AVM)

20 Sep 2005 12:57

Avocet Mining PLC20 September 2005 AVOCET MINING PLC ("Avocet" or the "Company") Directors' shareholding, notification of interests - Employee Benefit Trust 20 September 2005 Maitland Trustees Limited as Trustee of the Avocet Mining Employee Benefit Trust("EBT") informed the Company on 20 September 2005 that it had released 384,985ordinary shares of 25p each in the Company to the beneficial ownership of planmembers of the EBT. These EBT shares were allocated to employees of the Companyin prior years as deferred share bonus awards. As a result of the releasesMaitland Trustees Limited as Trustee of the Avocet Mining Employee Benefit Trustnow holds a total of 1,046,448 ordinary shares, representing 1.0 per cent of theissued ordinary share capital of the Company. Maitland Trustees Limited acts as the trustee for the Company's EBT, a plan setup in order to reward employees for the performance of the Company on a longterm basis and to enable the Company to continue to attract a high calibre ofmanagement and operational personnel. The directors of the Company arepotential beneficiaries under the EBT and are deemed to be interested in thoseshares held or dealt in by the EBT for the purposes of section 324 of theCompanies Act 1985. Of the 384,985 ordinary shares released from the EBT124,696 and 83,831 were released to John Catchpole, Chief Executive Officer, andJonathan Henry, Finance Director, respectively. These were from deferred sharebonus awards given in 2002 and 2004. As a result of this issue John Catchpole now holds 1,142,696 ordinary shares inthe Company which represents 1.09 per cent of the enlarged issued share capital. The Company was informed on 20 September 2005 that Jonathan Henry, FinanceDirector, had on 19 September 2005 exercised 100,000 share options with anexercise price of 30p and sold 60,000 ordinary shares (to pay the related taxesand other expenses with regard to the exercise of options and beneficialownership of EBT shares) at 97.5p per share. His total resultant holdingfollowing this notification is therefore increased to 333,831 ordinary shares(representing 0.32 per cent of the issued share capital of the Company). Application has been made for the 100,000 new ordinary shares issued pursuant tothe exercise of options to be admitted to trading on AIM, and admission isexpected on 26 September 2005. This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange