Cash shell New World Oil & Gas has got off to a bright start in its first day of dealings on Aim.
The company, whose directors include ex-Victoria Oil & Gas executives William Kelleher and Georges Sztyk, has raised £3m by issuing new shares at 5p each, giving it a market capitalisation of £3.8m. After more than 50 institutional meetings, the directors have convinced a range of investors to back their business plan and track record, selling 86% of the business and retaining the other 14%.
New World was founded last year, and it will use the proceeds of the share sale to seek early stage oil and gas assets, usually pre-production. It has screened around 30 possible projects and is now concentrating on Belize, Eastern Canada and Europe. It hopes to tie up a trio of deals before the year end. After that it will use its equity to invest in developing the projects.
Belize looks likely to be the first deal tied up, with news expected in the coming weeks. More immediately, it is set to announce a tie up with a consultancy group to seek investments in Central and Southern America.
The issue was oversubscribed, and the company's shares are currently standing at 5.25p.
No thanks to the London Stock Exchange. The company requested and was given the ticker "New.L" but unfortuately, the exchange's news service listed a number of announcements relating to a previous company which had that ticker but which had been delisted. This appeared to cause confusion among some investors, until the exchange was persuaded to delete the previous, and irrelevant, announcements.
