Triple Plate Junction (LON:TPJ) has called in a brains trust to help it analyse the proprietary database it acquired from Newmont Mining.
When it announced in March it had been granted access to gold mining major Newmont's exploration database covering Myanmar, Laos, Malaysia, Indonesia and Cambodia, it said it was in discussion with an experienced exploration team to enable it to take advantage of this opportunity, and it turns out that not only is the exploration team experienced, it also has inside knowledge of the Newmont database.
The team comprises three key technical and corporate personnel who were involved in the successful exploration programmes of Normandy Mining, which Newmont acquired in 2002.
Bruce Kay (former head of Global Exploration for Normandy and Newmont), Jon Loraine (former managing director, International for Normandy and executive general manager Exploration and Development for MIM Holdings) and Paddy Waters (former senior geologist at BP Minerals, Australian Consolidated Minerals, Normandy Mining and Anglo American) have all been involved in successful exploration programmes worldwide.
The expectation is that all three will be offered positions on the Triple Plate Junction (TPJ) board once the company has completed an initial programme of work generated by analysis of the technical data.
The plan is for an option pool of just under 70mln shares, representing one-fifth of TPJ’s current share capital, to be made available to the trio should they join the board, with the options being exercisable at 0.625p.
The group has called for a general meeting to ratify a proposed sub-division of the shares, which currently have a nominal value of 1p each, into one ordinary share of 0.1p and nine deferred shares of 0.9p; stock exchange rules prevent a company from issuing shares below their nominal value, so this sub-division would be required for the issue of shares to Kay, Loraine and Waters should they choose to exercise their options.
At the meeting, shareholders will also get to vote on the new share option scheme plus various changes to the company’s articles of association arising from the proposed sub-division.
The company also intends to change its name to Aurasian Minerals, and its ticker symbol to AUM.
Shares in Triple Plate Junction rose 6.7% to 0.4p as investors welcomed another step in the company’s reinvigoration.