A round-up of other business news in brief...
Aer Lingus urges No vote to Ryanair agm proposals
Aer Lingus has urged its shareholders to vote against resolutions that it says Ryanair intends to propose at the former State airline’s annual general meeting on June 5th.
Two of the resolutions contain proposals to reduce the remuneration of the airline’s directors. Aer Lingus said its board members had voluntarily reduced their fees by 20 per cent in February.
“Aer Lingus’s non-executive directors’ and chairman’s fees, prior to the 20 per cent reduction, were in line, if not lower than fees at comparable Irish public companies,” it said.
Drug development company Amarin agrees bridging finance
Drug development company Amarin has agreed bridging finance to fund company operations for the rest of 2009.
Chief executive Tom Lynch said current investors in the group and some of its directors had agreed to fund the $2.6 million (€1.8 million) package.
He said the Nasdaq-listed business would continue “ongoing discussions” with both existing and potential investors in an effort to secure longer term funding.
Mr Lynch said he was “very grateful for the support of a number of long-standing investors in this bridge financing”.
The bridging finance consists of convertible loan notes and warrants. The notes will pay interest of 8 per cent per annum. The warrants entitle investors to buy shares up to half their loan note entitlement. The bridging finance became necessary when investors who put up $28 million in May 2008 indicated they would not exercise their option to invest a further $28 million.
Ormonde reports 2.5m pretax loss
Ormonde Mining, the IEX-listed exploration group, has reported a pretax loss of 2.5 million for the year to the end of December.
The loss is mainly due to the writedown of early exploration work at its Spanish gold project Salamon and Trives.
The company also reported a three-fold increase in the estimated tungsten resource at Barruecopardo in Salamanca.
As previously announced this may allow the mine to sustain a 400,000 tonne per year production rate, almost double earlier estimates.
