Berkeley bosses reap rewards

Managing director of Berkeley, Rob Perrins, recently sold 300,000 shares at 2,000p a share to raise a cool £6m, but he still holds over 1.05m shares. And chairman and co-founder Tony Pidgley also sold 354,488 shares through Mrs SJ Pidgley, although he still holds a chunky 5.6m shares worth around £118m. And these shares are probably going to be worth a lot more, given the house builder’s stellar performance. Not only has it just paid a 15p per share interim dividend at a cost of £20m, but there is a further £548m targeted for payment in dividends no later than by September 2015. That’s about 1,300p a share. And none of this will come at the expense of cutting investment plans, with recent land purchases on target to increase the size of the land bank by 10 per cent by the end of the financial year this April. And crucially, most of the land acquired is in key sites in and around London. Recent planning consent granted includes Hampton House on the Albert Embankment and Sovereign Court in Hammersmith. What’s more, a further three new sites have been bought at Finchley, Mill Hill and Maidenhead. Forward sales currently stand at £1.4bn.

Jonas Crosland

Nesis bumps up holding in Polymetal

Vitaly Nesis, chief executive of Polymetal (POLY) - a precious metals producer with interests in Russia and Kazakhstan - has bumped-up his holding in the group to 3.1m shares through the acquisition of 100,000 shares at 713.75p apiece. The chief executive admitted that the £713,750 acquisition was intended as a clear signal to the market that the current value of the group does not reflect its long-term potential - so much for price discovery. But these are undoubtedly uncertain times for the group, as doubts have emerged over the sustainability of gold’s historic bull-run. These doubts were partially responsible for a 31 per cent fall in the group’s share price over the past quarter, but Polymetal may also struggle to keep a lid on cash-costs against a background of rising Russian inflation. Nevertheless, despite a deteriorating outlook for the precious metals suite, shareholders in the group recently benefited from a 55 per cent increase in the final dividend to 31 cents a share, and that’s on top of an earlier special dividend of 50p. They can also take heart from the fact that Polymetal managed to successfully ramp-up production at the Dukat and Varvara mines to optimum capacity, while a positive beat was provided post year-end through completion of the $77.3m (£50.9m) cash/scrip deal to acquire the Maminskoye gold mining field exploration and mining licence, together with news that the flotation concentrator at the group’s Mayskoye mine had been successfully brought online.

Mark Robinson

Buys

Sells

Table compiled by Robert Ansted

Key to abbreviations: ch = chairman; ce = chief executive; cfo = chief financial officer; fd = finance director; coo = chief operating officer; cs =company secretary; md = managing director