Admission to AIM

Chaarat Gold Holdings Ltd 08 November 2007 Chaarat Gold Holdings Ltd 8 November 2007 Chaarat Gold Holdings Ltd - Admission to AIM ('Chaarat Gold' or the 'Company', AIM:CGH), a junior exploration and mining company established for the purpose of exploring and developing the licence which is currently held by its Kyrgyz wholly-owned subsidiary Chaarat Zaav CJSC in the western part of the Kyrgyz Republic, today announces its first day of dealings of its Ordinary Shares on AIM. Canaccord Adams Limited is acting as both Nominated Adviser and Broker to the Company. The Company has raised £8.8m via a Placing at 60p per share, giving the Company a market capitalisation of £43.1m. The funds raised will be used for future exploration work, which will be focused on increasing the resource delineated by the Company, as well as on a pre-feasibility study, which is scheduled to be undertaken in 2008. Overview of the Company Chaarat Gold Holdings Ltd was incorporated in the BVI on 20 July 2007 and became the holding company of the Group. The Chaarat Group was founded for the purposes of exploring and developing the Licence currently held by Chaarat K in the western part of the Kyrgyz Republic. The Licence grants Chaarat K the exclusive rights to conduct geological prospecting and exploration for gold and other metals, in the Licence Area, as well as the exclusive right to apply for a mining licence for the same metals. The Licence Area is 604.6 km2 in extent and hosts many highly prospective gold occurrences over a strike length of some 28 kilometres. To date, extensive prospecting has only been conducted on a small number of higher priority targets. The Company has focused its exploration on an area that the Directors considered to be the most prospective and readily accessible part of the Licence Area, based on historical information. Advanced stage prospecting, including the ongoing resource drilling programme, on seven priority targets, has delineated wide zones of gold mineralisation. By the end of the 2006 exploration season, an Indicated and Inferred Resource of 1.9 million ounces at a gold grade of 4.1g/t had been delineated on these targets. Subsidiary amounts of silver and antimony occur within the mineralised zones. Additional targets are being explored but had not been drilled during the 2006 season. The Licence has been granted to 31 December 2008 and the terms of the Licence allow for the Company to extend the period of licence up to 10 years for successive periods of, generally, two years until 2012. Growth Strategy The Directors' intention for the Group is to continue the intensive exploration programme to test the priority targets which were identified in its recent work programmes and to increase the mineral resource base within the Licence Area. At the same time, the Group intends to undertake a series of studies which are expected to lead to the completion of a feasibility study conducted to bankable standards, on the most advanced part of the Mineral Resource, which, it is intended, will allow for the design, finance, construction and commissioning of a mine within the next five years. It is further intended to establish a Mineral Resource on the priority targets which will support a mining operation with a production rate of 200,000 oz of gold a year in a proposed 10-year first phase of mining. The Licence Area hosts many highly prospective gold occurrences and gold soil sample anomalies which may prove to represent economically viable gold deposits. The Directors believe the Mineral Resources in the Licence Area may be extended, through further exploration, and thereby allow for an expansion of the anticipated first phase mining operation. Furthermore it is the intention to expand the exploration programme to other parts of the Licence Area. The Company also intends to work actively to identify other gold occurrences with potential, in the vicinity of the Licence Area, where it will seek to acquire the rights to prospect in order to expand the gold resource base of the Company. Key strengths The Directors believe there are a number of reasons why the Company represents an attractive investment proposition: • the Licence Area is within the highly prospective Tien Shan gold belt, which hosts numerous large gold deposits and mining operations, which have a similar geological setting to that encountered within the Licence Area; • the Kyrgyz Republic has a well established mining industry and infrastructure and the Directors believe that the government is supportive of the mining industry; • exploration results, particularly those received by the Company during the 2005 and 2006 exploration seasons, have extended the zones of mineralisation in the known gold occurrences, and have discovered new gold occurrences. These results also have increased the probability that the Licence Area may host significant gold mineralisation, which has the potential to be developed into economically viable gold deposits and mining operations; • exploration results to date have confirmed significant additional gold occurrences and soil geochemical anomalies within the Licence Area; • within the Company's Board of Directors and Senior Management there is appropriate expertise and experience to develop the Company's operations; and • the Company's future prospects offer further attractive growth potential in the expansion of Mineral Resources on its current priority targets, as well as in advancing prospecting on the gold occurrences within the Licence Area that have not yet been intensively prospected. In addition, further growth may be realised if the Company is able to acquire any other gold occurrences with potential within the area surrounding the Licence Area. For further Information: Dekel Golan - Chaarat Gold Holdings Ltd Tel: +44 (0)20 7499 2612 Dekel@chaarat.com Canaccord Adams Limited Tel: +44 (0) 20 7050 6500 Mike Jones Robin Birchall Alex Glover/Tim Weller Fin Public Relations Tel: 020 7608 2280 or Mob: +44 7887 610 335 alex.glover@fininternational.com NOTES TO EDITORS Placing Statistics Placing Price: 60p Number of Ordinary Shares being issued pursuant to the Placing: 14,669,833 Number of Ordinary Shares in issue following Admission: 71,883,433 Number of Options in issue following Admission: 8,160,00 Number of Existing Shares: 57,213,600 Existing Shares as a percentage of Enlarged Share Capital: 79.6 per cent. Placing Shares as a percentage of Enlarged Share Capital: 20.4 per cent. Estimated gross proceeds of the Placing receivable by the Company: £8,801,900 Estimated net proceeds of the Placing receivable by the Company (exclusive of applicable VAT): £7,673,533 Market capitalisation of the Company at the Placing Price on Admission (assuming that no Options are exercised): £43,130,059 Key Management Mr Dekel Golan (Chief Executive Officer) (Age 51) Mr Golan is a graduate of Tel Aviv University. Mr Golan, formerly president of Apex Asia LDC, a subsidiary of Apex Silver Mines Limited, has extensive experience in promoting and developing businesses both in emerging economies as well as the developed world. Mr Golan was the founder and Executive Chairman of African Plantations Corporation Limited. In addition, Mr Golan has advised a number of international and Israeli companies on business development and competitive intelligence. Prior to those activities Mr Golan was Vice President of Business Development of Supersol, the largest retail operator in Israel and established and managed the unit for competitive intelligence for Dead Sea Bromine Group, the world's largest bromine producer. Mr Golan is an Israeli national. Mr Terence Arthur Cross (Finance Director) (Age 59) Mr Cross is an MBA graduate of the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg and is a member of the South African Institute of Professional Accountants. His working experience has been gained primarily in mining and related industries. Since immigrating to the UK in 1996, Mr Cross worked for eighteen months as an independent consultant then for four years as a Projects and Financial Control Manager for Barclays Bank. During the most recent six years he has worked as Group Financial Controller for a number of AIM listed mining exploration companies. Prior to moving to the UK he was, for six years, General Manager of a specialist equipment and consumables supplier to the mining industry in South Africa. Mr Cross was a director of Johannesburg Stock Exchange listed companies, Consolidated Modderfontein Mines Ltd and South Roodepoort Main Reef Areas Ltd, from 1988 to 1992 and was Group Financial Controller and subsequently a director of the mining management company, Golden Dumps (Pty) Ltd, through the period from 1986 until 1989. Mr Cross was previously employed in financial management positions for eleven years with Celanese Corporation of New York and for seven years with the Barlow Rand Group, of South Africa. Mr Cross holds dual British and South African nationality. Mr Alexander Novak (Executive Director) (Age 51) Mr Novak is a graduate of the Kazakh Polytechnic Institute (M.Sc). Mr. Novak has assisted several companies investing in Kyrgyzstan in various aspects of finance, administration and representation vis a vis the local authorities since 2000 Mr Novak has more than 25 years experience in various aspects of business management in Central Asia including negotiations with governmental institutions, contractors, preparation of development plans, monitoring of operations and public relations. Mr Novak was instrumental in drafting and signing investment agreements between the government of the Kyrgyz Republic and two extraction companies, Textonic and Kumushtak, a subsidiary of Apex Silver Mines Limited. From 1992 to 1995, Mr Novak was a founding partner and a director of Maya Elev Diamond Limited, a diamond processing plant in Russia. From 1978 through to 1990, Mr Novak held several positions at numerous construction companies in Kazakhstan, including Director of KazStroiMontajAvtomatika. Mr. Novak is also the sole director of Chaarat K. Mr Novak is an Israeli national. Mr Christopher David Palmer-Tomkinson (Non-Executive Chairman) (Age 65) Mr Palmer-Tomkinson graduated from Oxford University with a degree in jurisprudence and joined Cazenove in 1963. He served as a partner from 1972 until 2001 and as managing director international corporate finance until May 2002. He was responsible at various times for Cazenove's African and Australian business which enabled him to focus on the resource sector. Mr Palmer-Tomkinson is a director of Highland Gold Mining Limited. Mr Palmer-Tomkinson is a British national. Mr Stuart Robert Comline (Non-Executive Director) (Age 58) Mr Comline is a graduate of the University of Natal South Africa (B.Sc Hons.Geology) and University of Western Ontario (M.Sc Geology). Mr Comline was Chairman, and formerly President and Chief Operating Officer, of AfriOre Limited, a TSX and AIM listed company until January 2007, when the company was purchased by Lonmin Plc. Mr Comline has 35 years of experience in the international exploration and mining industry mostly in Africa and Canada. He spent 20 years with JCI Limited, in a number of senior management positions including General Manager of Exploration. In the mid-nineties he was an independent consultant and worked with merchant banks and major and junior exploration companies within the mining and exploration field until joining AfriOre Limited in 1997. Mr Comline has experience in various commodities including gold, platinum, base metals, diamonds and coal. Mr Comline is currently an independent advisor to several mineral exploration companies and serves Talon Metals Corporation, a TSX listed mining and mineral exploration company, as a non-executive director. Mr Comline is a British national. Mr Oliver Raymond Greene (Non-Executive Director) (Age 64) Oliver Greene is a graduate in Politics, Philosophy and Economics from Oxford University. A career banker, he has over thirty five years experience as a practitioner in international corporate finance, credit and corporate recovery in the US and Europe. Mr Greene joined Citibank in 1965 holding various assignments in New York and London with experience in Petroleum and Chemicals financing, leasing and structured finance, and exposure to Scandinavian and Eastern European markets. In 1980 Mr Greene moved to Bankers Trust Company to head their UK World Corporate Department in London. He joined Chase Manhattan Bank in 1988 as Managing Director, Head of UK Corporate Finance followed in 1990 by the management of impaired assets in the UK. In 1996 Mr Greene moved to UBS as a Managing Director in Corporate Finance before accepting an invitation to join the European Bank for Reconstruction & Development in 1998 as Director of Corporate Recovery. On Mr Greene's retirement from the EBRD in 2003 he became a consultant to the bank, an appointment that continues. Mr Greene served as a member of the Supervisory Board and Chairman of the Remuneration Committee of Banca Comerciala Romana S.A. in Bucharest from 2004 to 2006. Since 2004 Mr Greene has been a member of the Supervisory Board and Chairman of the Audit Committee of Bank Pekao S.A Warsaw (a publicly listed Unicredito Group subsidiary) and, since 2006, a member of the Supervisory Board of Korado AS in the Czech Republic. Mr Greene is a US/UK dual national. This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock Exchange
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