Botswana Diamonds raises fresh funds from directors and their families

Botswana Diamonds successfully raised fresh funding for its projects, including from various of its directors and their families.

The junior diamond exploration company raised £543,000 from directors' families and Irish investors via a private placing of 43.44m shares at a discounted price of 1.25p.

In parallel, chairman John Teeling, finance chief James Finn and David Horgan, one of the company's directors, subscribed for 2.4m, 1.2m and 1.2m new shares on those same terms, respectively, raising a further £60,000.

Following the announcement, the board was further advised that 31.24m warrants would be exercised at a strike price of 0.25p for a total of £265,576, with the company's directors accounting for £124,000 of that amount.

A total of 79.5m new shares would be issued as a result of the above transactions, for total proceeds of £868,576.

Botswana Diamonds said it would have 459m ordinary shares in issue following the admission of all the new shares for trading on AIM on or around 9 August 2017.

Proceeds would be used to bring the Vutomi project at Frischgewaagt, the company's South African-based diamond drilling operation, to inferred resource status and enable Botswana Diamonds to continue its exploration activities in its namesake country, the company said.

Teeling commented:"Botswana Diamonds has exciting projects. We are happy to invest in them."

Shares were down by -11.9% to 1.30p by 08:30 BST