Oxford Cannabinoid Technologies (OCT) has seen its second senior departure in under a month as it begins to recover from the fallout of a credit deal which breached market rules.
OCT’s Non-Executive Director Gavin Sathianathan announced that he wished to ‘retire from the Board with immediate effect’.
It came amid a flurry of announcements from OCT, which included a secondary listing in the US and a split with its corporate advisors States Bridge Capital Limited.
In a market announcement Mr Sathianathan, who also holds positions on the boards of Grass & Co., Product Earth and Pharma C, chose to depart to ‘focus full-time on his role as Chief Executive Officer at Alta Flora Limited’.
He will retain his 2.4m ordinary shares in the OCT, and says he remains ‘fully supportive of the company and looks forward to playing an active role as a key shareholder in the future.”
The news came just weeks after Neil Mahapatra agreed to step down from his position as OCT Executive Chairman in the wake of an ill-fated deal between his company Kingsley Capital Partners (KCP) and merchant bank Brown Shipley, which breached market rules, and subsequently sent OCT’s shares into freefall.
Secondary Listing In The US
The news comes amid the announcement that OCT has completed a secondary listing on the US OTC Equity Market.
From December 1 the company’s shares will be traded on the mid-tier OTC QB Market under the ticker symbol ‘OCTHF’.
While no capital raise was launched in conjunction with its admission to the market and ‘no new shares have been issued’, the announcement has helped boost its stocks on the London Stock Exchange (LSE), where it listed in May 2021 at 5p per share.
Since the announcement, OCT’s LSE-listed shares have jumped over 10% to 2.75p, topping off a week of strong trading for the company.
On November 26 its stock hit an all-time low of 1.81p, but has since climbed over 50% to the highest levels seen since early October.
OCT’s CEO Dr John Lucas said in a statement to investors: “We are delighted to see the commencement of dual trading in the Company’s shares today, marking another significant corporate milestone for OCT.
“It will increase liquidity and significantly enhance the ability of US-based investors to access and trade OCTP shares. In the coming months, OCTP’s management team will be placing additional emphasis upon increasing our outreach efforts to US-based institutional and retail investors and widening our shareholder base.”
Split With Advisors
On November 30, OCT announced that it had ‘mutually agreed’ to part ways with its financial advisor States Bridge Capital with immediate effect.
States Bridge Capital were brought in to help OCT launch its £16.5m raise and admission to the Official List on the LSE in May.
OCT says it is now ‘in the process’ of appointing a new corporate broker and hopes to make an announcement ‘in the near future’.
In the meantime it announced on October 26 that it has appointed US strategic investor relations advisor Harbor Access, to oversee its launch onto the OTC market.
OCT is understood to have retained Harbor Access for an initial six-months to oversee investor relations in the new market.
