Notes to the financial statements

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39 Directors' share interests

The interests of the Directors (all of which are beneficial) in the ordinary shares of the Company as stated in the register of directors’ interests are shown below. Share interests stated before the Company’s share consolidation on 11 July 2005 relate to ordinary shares of 50p each while those stated after that date relate to ordinary shares of 53⅛p each.

The share interests shown above for each of Mr S P Ball, Mr R W Perry, Mr M J Queen and Mr P E Yea include performance share awards which are subject to forfeiture and are detailed in the table in the Directors' remuneration report.

In addition to the interests shown above, the executive Directors also have beneficial interests in the conditional rights to acquire shares arising from performance linked awards granted under the Management Equity Investment Plan. Each of the employees of the Group (including each of the executive Directors) is a potential beneficiary of The 3i Group Employee Trust and as such is interested (within the meaning of section 324 of the Companies Act 1985) in the shares held by the trust. The trust held 12,496,297 shares as at 1 April 2005, 12,252,014 shares as at 6 July 2005 and 11,311,280 shares as at 31 March 2006. This number of shares includes the shares over which Directors are mentioned above as having conditional rights to acquire under the Management Equity Investment Plan.

Details of Directors' share options under the Group's Executive Share Option Plans are shown in the Directors' remuneration report.

In the period from 1 April 2006 to 3 May 2006 the undermentioned Directors became beneficially interested in the following number of additional shares: Mr P E Yea (42 shares), Mr S P Ball (39 shares) and Mr M J Queen (42 shares). In addition, as at that date, the number of shares held by the 3i Group Employee Trust was 11,311,280.