News

Kalimantan Gold has completed a private placement of 11m shares at 10 cents each to raise C$1.1m to fund ongoing gold and coal exploration in Indonesia and for general working capital purposes.

Australia's Macquarie Bank has invested $300,000, San Francisco-based Passport Capital, $500,000, while several UK investors have picked up the remaining $300,000.

"It's a very good result in a challenging market place and the placement was significantly oversubscribed," said CEO Rahman Connelly.

Aerospace and engineering group Hampson Industries' recently acquired US subsidiary has won a $17m contract to supply tools to build Boeing 747-8 planes.

"This represents Hampson's third material contract win since the announcement of full year results in early June," Hampson chief executive Kim Ward said.

"This latest award confirms the strategic vision driving our acquisition of Odyssey."

Hampson acquired Odyssey on May 2.

Shares in engineer Bateman Litwin moved higher after it said it had been awarded a €75m share of a contract to help redevelop an underground gas storage facility in Beynes, France for Gaz de France.

The other consortium members are piping manufacturer Boccard and Actemium, a company engaged in electricity, data processing, instrumentation and mechanical solutions.

Shares in ClinPhone rallied after Parexel announced that its 135p cash and share offer for the clinical trial technology provider has been accepted.

The offer, which represents a 31% premium to ClinPhone's closing price of 103p on Thursday, values the group at about £91m.

Meanwhile, Quintiles Transnational said it may make an all-cash counter offer for ClinPhone, which would be at a premium to the price per share offered by Parexel.

Airea has appointed Neil Rylance as chief executive with immediate effect. "We are delighted to appoint someone of Neil's calibre as chief executive," said chairman Tim Vernon.

Digital video surveillance solutions provider in China BlueStar has been awarded a new contract by the Bank of Communications for a value of approximately RMB3m (Chinese yuan).

Educational computing specialist RM Group has been appointed as selected bidder by Aberdeen College to provide outsourced managed IT services. The contract is initially expected to be worth £7.5m over five years.

Oil and gas production firm Sefton said total fluid produced from the three Snow wells thus far has been low due to a number of problems, including mechanical pump problems and mud contamination issues.

The new financial year has started well at SerVision, said the digital security systems firm whose business is on a "sound footing" and has a "healthy" indicative order book for 2008.