Ann: Chairmans Address to EGM, page-105

the norm (and fairest imo) is to allocate rights issues based on how many shares you held previously. if you held 1% of the company and they do a rights issue for 100m shares, you're can take up 1m. if you held 0.1% then you can get up to 100k etc. then whatever isn't taken up from that gets allocated pro rata again based on your pre-existing shares. for a regular placement then sure you run it as first in first serve, but point of a rights issue is to allow existing investors to retain (at least in part) their existing ownership of the company.