Several company bosses appear to have given themselves hefty paydays over the last week as a number of chief executives and chairmen cashed in shares.
By far the biggest beneficiary has been Softcat (SCT) chairman Martin Hellawell, who sold off 1.17m shares - 1m at £10.46 per share and 170,000 at £10.96 apiece -banking £12.3m in the process.
Hellawell, who used to be chief executive of the company for 12 years, still owns around 3% of the firm despite having sold off several significant chunks of shares this year, with the latest deal taking his total pocketed to £36m in 2019.
Over the past two years, Hellawell, his wife Mandy and connected parties have sold £71m in Softcat shares.
Hotel Chocolat (HOTC:AIM) co-founders Angus Thirlwell and Peter Harris also netted a decent payday after cashing in a slice of their stake in the business.
Chief executive Thirlwell and development director Harris both sold 1.2m shares at a price of 420p per share, netting them £5m each.
The sales barely dented their holdings, with both still holding 31.58% each of the company’s issued share capital.
Hotel Chocolat insisted both ‘remain strongly aligned’ to the business and that they have no plans to sell any further shares for 12 months, adding that Thirlwell and Harris sold their shares ‘in response to investor demand’.
Another boss cashing in shares was John Morgan, the chief executive of builder Morgan Sindall (MGNS).
Morgan netted almost £4.1m after selling 300,000 shares in the business at £13.64 apiece.
The sale came two days after Morgan Sindall upgraded its full year performance guidance in a trading update, sending its shares up around 3.5% on the news.
Every Thursday, Shares will roundup the biggest director deals over the past week.
For a full list of the past week’s most significant director trades, click here.
