Aggreko bosses snap up shares after price slumps on warning

By PETER RANSCOMBE
Published on 22/12/2012 00:00

DIRECTORS at some of Scotland’s most high-profile listed companies have dipped into their own pockets to snap up shares in their firms during the run-up to Christmas.

Aggreko chairman Ken Hanna snapped up £117,180-worth of stock in the Glasgow-based temporary power 
supplier, whose shares were hit by a profit warning on Monday.

The FTSE 100 stock dropped by nearly 22 per cent, wiping £1.2 billion off its market value, before slowly starting to recover later in the week.

The firm warned that a “double whammy” of American troops leaving Afghanistan and a lack of sporting events to replicate the success of the Olympics will reduce demand for its generators during 2013.

Chief executive Rupert Soames bought shares worth £25,607, while financial director Angus Cockburn spent £24,598 buying up stock.

Their relatively-modest purchases were eclipsed, though, by Quayle Munro chairman Christopher Kemball, who bought £1.1 million worth of shares in the merchant bank, pushing his stake up to 4.2 per cent.

Quayle Munro has retreated to London since selling its Edinburgh operations in September to its management team, creating a spin-out firm called Quayle Munro Project Finance.

Meanwhile, Larry Schwartz – president of Diageo’s North America operations – has netted himself just over £909,000 after being awarded two tranches of shares under the spirit giant’s senior executive share options plan and then immediately selling the stock.

Schwartz’s stock was awarded in American Depository Shares (ADS), the method by which British companies pay dividends and trade shares overseas.

On a smaller scale, Tom Reynolds – chief executive of Aberdeen-based Bridge Energy – and the managing directors of the company’s UK and Norwegian businesses have bought shares worth a total of £66,000 following news of the firm’s drilling success this week. Aim-quoted Bridge, created in 2010 through the merger of Bridge Energy and Silverstone Energy and also listed in Oslo, found oil in the Norwegian North Sea.