www.petromatad.com
Petro Matad is the parent company of a group focused on oil exploration, as well as future development and production in Mongolia. The Group’s principal asset is the Production Sharing Contract (PSC) over Matad Block XX, a petroleum block with an area of 14,250km2 in the far eastern part of Mongolia, near the Chinese border. Recently the company signed two more Production Sharing Contracts on Bogd Block IV and Ongi Block V, a total of approximately 71,000km² in central Mongolia. Petro Matad Limited’s shares were admitted to trading on AIM, London Stock Exchange, on May 1st, 2008. The company’s largest shareholder is Petrovis LLC, the largest importer and distributor of petroleum products in Mongolia. The company is the first substantially Mongolian owned company to have its shares admitted to trading on any major international stock exchange.
Small cap shares hold up well amid market turmoil
Small cap shares have held up relatively well today compared to London’s biggest companies amid global stock market turmoil over concern about the health of the banking system.
After the Dow closed down 2.5 per cent last night, following the announcement by the US Federal Reserve that it is planning a US$400 billion initiative to try to lower long-term interest rates and a warning from the International Monetary Fund that the US and Europe could slip back into recession, shares in London plunged this morning. At lunchtime, the FTSE 100 index was down 4.8 per cent at 5,033.94 points.
Banks were among the largest fallers, with Barclays (LON:BARC), HSBC (LON:HSBA), Lloyds Banking Group (LON:LLOY), Royal Bank of Scotland Group (LON:RBS) seeing their shares down between four per cent and 7.1 per cent at lunchtime.
However, although falling themselves small cap shares have proved rather resilient to the turmoil in general. The FTSE Small Cap index, which tracks small firms on London’s main list, was down just 2.1 per cent at 2,838.11 points
Meanwhile, the FTSE AIM Index was down 2.3 per cent at 704.14 points at midday today, while the FTSE AIM 100 Index – which tracks shares in the largest 100 companies on London’s junior market – was down three per cent at 3349.18 points.
At midday, only 10 shares from the AIM 100 index were in positive territory. The best performer among these was Petro Matad (LON:MATD), which saw an 11.64 per cent rise in its by lunchtime to hit 40.75 pence. The Mongolia-focused oil exploration company has not released any news today, although it did announce a week ago that it had been granted a two-year extension to its production sharing contract for its Block XX asset in the country.
The next best performer among AIM 100 shares was power projects developer OPG Power Ventures (LON:OPG), which announced today that it had begun work at its 300-megawatt power project in Gujarat, India. Its shares improved three per cent to 64.4 pence each.
Among the biggest AIM 100 fallers today were Sable Mining Africa (LON:SBLM), Eastern Platinum (LON:ELR) and Blinkx (LON:BLNX), which were down 15.93 per cent, 13.54 per cent and 6.95 per cent respectively by lunchtime today.
Sable Mining’s fall went against intuition since it announced to the market just before midday that two of its directors had each purchased 500,000 shares in the firm at 11.25 pence per share, while the other two companies made no announcements today.
The best performer among FTSE Small Cap companies was Hyder Consulting (LON:HYC), which was up just 1.71 per cent at 330.5 pence, while the worst performer was Anglesey Mining (LON:AYM), which was down 8.5 per cent at 43 pence.
