[1]Terry: £95,000 investment
Six directors of alternative business structure Quindell plc – including the chairman and vice-chairman – have invested in extra shares as a display of confidence in the company.
The move aims to counter the fall in Quindell’s share price since the publication of a controversial note by little-known American company Gotham City Research, which led to a dramatic drop in Quindell’s share price, strong rebuttals from the company [2] and considerable media coverage over alleged ‘shorting’ activity.
Quindell announced yesterday that founder and chairman Rob Terry bought 500,000 shares at 19p, costing him £95,000. He now holds 684.5m shares in Quindell, approximately 10.89% of the total issued share capital.
Tony Bowers, the senior independent non-executive director and vice-chairman, purchased 131,579 shares at 19p, at a cost of £25,000. This gives the former Deloitte partner nearly 1.5m shares in the company, approximately 0.02% of the issued shares.
Fellow director Robert Burrow, a former partner of City law firm SJ Berwin (as it was then called) invested £29,850 to buy a further 150,000 shares at 19.9p. This gives him a shareholding of nearly 16m shares, or 0.25% of the company.
Stephen Scott spent £19,000 to add a further 100,000 shares to his existing pot of 75.5m, meaning he holds 1.22% of Quindell, while both Robert Bright and Vice-Admiral Robert Cooling have bought 25,000 shares at 20p, each investing £5,000. Mr Bright has 0.03% of the company, and Vice-Admiral Cooling 0.12%.
All have their shares in their own names together with shares held as family interests.
Quindell’s institutional shareholders are well known and respected in the market – after Mr Terry, the biggest shareholders are M&G Investments (which is Prudential), with nearly 7%, Fidelity Management and Research (5.5%) and Investec Asset Management (3.5%).
To date Quindell’s various efforts to repair the damage done by Gotham City have done little to bolster its share price, which closed last night at 20p after another day of well above-average trading. As of 10.45am today, it had risen to 22.5p.