Companies: AFN    NOI    ONL    PGS    RGT    ZOX   

As foreshadowed here in August, New Opportunities Investment Trust, whose shares were listed today on the London Stock Exchange, has agreed an £850,000 share swap with Aim-listed ZincOx Resources, a £1 million swap with ReGen Therapeutics and a £440,000 swap with ADVFN, as well as swaps with Offshore Telecom and two Ofex counters, Croma and Insensia. Robert Tyerman reports.

New Opportunities has so far raised £11.1 million in cash and share swaps at a nominal £1 a share, according to its broker Keith Bayley Rogers, which says the shares have opened at 90p to 100p. Keith Bayley's Howard Drummon says he expects the trust, which recently clinched a £350,000 share swap with Aim-listed investment group London & Boston, to raise up to £30 million, against a maximum target of £60 million.

ZincOx is seeking to impress with its zinc treatment process, claimed as economic even at depressed prices. Floated on Aim this year after a £3 million placing by broker Charles Stanley at 120p, its shares have fallen to 38.5p, though 2.2 million of them – worth nearly £850,000 – are being exchanged for one million New Opportunities £1 shares, plus 200,000 five-year warrants exercisable at £1.

ReGen, which is testing Colostrinin, a drug derived from sheep's milk, to treat Alzheimer's disease, is to exchange 21.2 million shares at a bombed-out 5p for 1.06 million New Opportunities shares at £1.

Loss-making Offshore Telecom is exchanging £315,000-worth of Aim-listed shares at a depressed 0.35p for 315,000 of New Opportunities'.

Out-of-favour internet games developer On-Line is taking 440,000 £1 New Opportunities shares for 12.5 per cent of Aim-listed financial website operator ADVFN at a lowly 1.25p.

Croma, planning an Aim move on prospects for its security and surveillance kit, is exchanging 2.5 million of its shares at 11.25p – down from their 15p float price – for 281,250 New Opportunities at £1.

Loss-making financial news and investor relations concern Insensia is swapping one million shares at 1p (half its float price) for 100,000 New Opportunities shares at £1. Stakes can be sold in three months and, with the trust likely to go first to an appreciable discount, it is a bet on a stock market recovery.