The past week has been a relatively quiet one when it comes to directors buying and selling shares in their companies with little of the volume usually seen, but there have been some notable deals.
The biggest involves Vanessa Perrins, the wife Berkeley (BKG) chief executive Rob Perrins, who sold over 228,000 shares in the FTSE 100 housebuilder on Friday at £47.43 each, in a transaction worth around £10.8 million in total.
The deal is only the second share sale made by Perrins or someone closely associated with him. In October, his wife sold around £715,000-worth of shares.
Perrins’ remaining beneficial holding in the housebuilder stands at one million shares, equivalent to 0.8% of its outstanding share capital.
Berkeley shares still haven’t recovered to pre-pandemic levels and in December it sounded warnings on the potential impact of Brexit and the pandemic alongside its first half numbers.
However, looking ahead the company reiterated full-year pre-tax profit guidance of £500 million, and has also committed to a target of returning £280 million to shareholders.
OTHER DEALS
Nick Prest, the chairman of AIM-listed defence technology group Cohort (CHRT:AIM), this week sold 285,000 shares at 615p each in a deal worth around £1.8 million.
Cohort said the sale was for ‘personal financial reasons’ and to satisfy demand from institutional investors. Following the transaction, Prest retains a 4.37% stake in the company.
Meanwhile Robert Cathery, a non-executive director of copper miner Central Asia Metals (CAML:AIM), sold 325,000 shares at an average price of 250p each in a deal worth £812,000, with his wife Elizabeth also selling the same amount of shares at the same price.
Shares in the popular retail stock have recovered strongly since taking a tumble in September when it had to temporarily halt production following a problem at one of its mines, jumping from 150p then to around the 250p mark today with the operational issues now resolved and the price of copper surging.
