A mixed bag but oil and mining played a part.
Hurricane Energy PLC (LON:HUR) has raised £70mln of new capital - cash that will be used to take the Lancaster oil project into development.
Hurricane told investors that the new funds would secure the timeline for the development of an early production system at Lancaster and would pay for the drilling of two more wells.
Significantly, the two new wells will target extra resources in what it refers to as the Greater Lancaster Area Fields. One of these exploration wells will be on the Lincoln prospect and either the Warwick or Rona Ridge prospects.
These prospects could be similar to Lancaster, according to Hurricane, which says there is potential for some 500mln barrels of prospective resources.
In other news, Stratex International plc (LON:STI) has announced a tie-up with fellow AIM-listed metals explorer GoldStone Resources Limited (LON:GRL) which will see it provide some technical services in return for a small fee.
Under the terms of the deal, Stratex will provide various mining and exploration services to Goldstone – which it has a 33.45% interest in – for a monthly charge of £1,750 + VAT.
GoldStone will also have to pay up again should it want Stratex to carry out any further work, such as analysis of results or project management.
Meanwhile, The BAM East prospect is rapidly developing into a significant new gold discovery, Landore Resources Ltd (LON:LND) told investors, as it started drilling again at the Ontario site.
The work will comprise 17 diamond drill holes to expand the newly defined central zone down-dip and along strike and to test prospective targets along the remaining 2.7 km MM-7 geophysical trend.
Significantly, the first two holes completed hit the same lithology as the higher holes with visible gold sighted.
Meanwhile, Churchill Mining PLC (LON:CHL), the Indonesia-focused coal stock, has technical support to add another 50% onto its current share price, according to chartist Zak Mir.
The King of Charts, in a TIP TV segment for Proactive, reckons the stock has the potential to hit 42p, a claim which he says is backed up by the technical analysis.
“The 200 day moving average, at 21 pence and rising, is presumably providing some positive momentum for the stock.”
In boardroom news, HSBC luminary Caroline Connellan is to take over as chief executive officer (CEO) at wealth management firm Brooks Macdonald Group plc (LON:BRK).
Current CEO and founder Chris Macdonald will become deputy chairman when Connellan joins in April 2017, and the plan is for him to eventually take on the role of chairman, subject to shareholder approval.
Connellan has more than 20 years’ experience in financial services, most recently as head of UK Premier and Wealth at HSBC, where she led the transformation of the UK Wealth business.
The announcement accompanied the release of the group’s quarterly funds under management (FuM) update, which showed discretionary FuM rose 7.2% in the quarter to £8.92bn from £8.30bn at the end of June.
Meanwhile, Highlands Natural Resources Plc (LON:HNR) has received a £2.5mln cash boost as an institutional investor picked up new shares through an exercise of warrants.
The share warrants were acquired by the investor last month through a third party transaction with Diversion Technologies, HNR’s partner in the DT Ultravert technology venture.
HNR has now received a total of £7.5mln from warrant exercises since July, and it said that neither Diversion nor the investor held any further share warrants.
Today’s transaction follows news of a breakthrough testing success in the testing of the DT Ultravert technology.