Mining and selling gold has been a very lucrative business so far this year and that doesn’t look like stopping anytime soon given the wall of worries created by the fallout from the coronavirus pandemic.

The shiny metal has returned princely sums for both the companies digging the commodity out of the ground, and also the people in charge of those companies it seems.

Highland Gold (HGM:AIM) chief executive Valery Oyf pocketed over £19.8 million after selling 6.6 million shares at 300p each, while chairman Eugene Shvidler raked in a whopping £53.9 million after selling 18 million shares at the same price.

The transactions were not ordinary director deals however, with both selling their shares to Fortiana Holdings as part of a £1 billion takeover deal. Under the deal, Fortiana offered Highland investors 300p per share to purchase the 40.06% of the company’s shares that it didn’t already own.

DUNKERTON BUYS MORE SUPERDRY SHARES

The charismatic co-founder and chief executive of fashion retailer Superdry (SDRY), Julian Dunkerton, has continued to show his faith in the business despite its troubles by snapping up even more of the company’s shares.

In two transactions this week, Dunkerton first bought 846,833 shares at a price of 135.77p each, for a total of over £1.1 million, then added another 154,089 shares at 138.51p each in a transaction totalling around £214,000. The purchases take his stake in the business to 19.5%.

The deals came just two days after the company’s share price tanked, sinking from around 155p at the close on Friday to around 135p on Monday morning after the firm posted a deeper annual loss as the pandemic hampered its turnaround efforts.

The firm said trading had improved as social distancing measures were relaxed, but even so revenue in the seven weeks to 12 September was down 31% while in the 20 weeks to 12 September it was down 27%.

OTHER DEALS

Neil Record, chairman and founder of currency manager Record (REC), sold four million shares in the business at an average price of 37.3p each in a transaction totalling £1.49 million.

Keystone Law (KEYS:AIM) non-executive director Simon Philips, who is also managing partner of private equity investor Root Capital, sold 700,000 shares in the company at a price of 475p each, in a deal worth £3.3 million.

For a full list of the week’s most significant trades, click here.

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Issue Date: 24 Sep 2020