Celtic requests shares to be delisted in Vancouver

Celtic Resources, which has just raised £200,000 through a private share placing, has had its shares delisted, at its own request, from the Vancouver Stock Exchange. In a statement Celtic said that it had requested that its Global Depository Receipts (GDR's) be delisted in Vancouver because the facility was rarely used and it had not enhanced the liquidity of Celtic shares.

Celtic shares will continue to trade in Dublin and London and the holders of GDR's can convert their holdings on a one for one basis into ordinary Celtic shares.

Celtic managing director Mr Sean Finlay said yesterday that the GDR's had not traded since April.

"We applied for a listing before the Bre-X scandal in March. Since then the market for resources stocks in Canada has been very bad."

The cost of the listing to Celtic, including ongoing costs, was about 100,000 Canadian dollars (£50,000), he said. There are about 3 million GDR's in issue held by some 24 shareholders. Celtic yesterday announced that it has raised £200,000 through issuing some 2,000,000 shares at 10p each (9p sterling). The funds will be used for working capital. The placing price is a 10p discount on the last trade in Dublin at 20p. But Mr Finlay said that the shares were more regularly traded in London where the trading range was 8p sterling to 12p sterling.

Three Celtic directors - chairman Dr Oliver Waldron, managing director Mr Sean Finlay and non-executive director Mr Graeme Thomson subscribed for 19.5 per cent of the shares.

Dr Waldron and Mr Thomson bought 125,000 shares each while Mr Finlay bought 140,000 shares. The balance of the issue was taken up by private investors both existing investors in the company and some new investors, Mr Finlay said.