Black horse pays out for directors

First up is the head of Scottish Widows, and group director of insurance, pensions and investments, Antonio Lorenzo. Lorenzo, who originally joined Lloyds from Santander, sold about £1.2mn-worth of shares – approximately 2.75mn at 44.8p a share. Whether these were vesting options or personal holdings is not clear. Lorenzo runs the now strategically important wealth management division for Lloyds, which the bank is relying on as it tries to diversify its business revenues away from the UK mortgage market. As such, he has had a busy year as Lloyds ramps up its wealth management operations.

He was joined in the summer sale by Lloyds’ interim chief operating officer David Oldfield, a company lifer who began his career with the bank in 1984. As well the interim role, he currently oversees the bank’s commercial lending arm. Oldfield sold a more modest £500,000-worth of shares.

On balance, it is probably worth considering the general prospects for Lloyd’s before jumping to any conclusions. The last set of results showed that the bank is clearly floating on an upward trend when it comes to interest rates, with net interest margins only set to widen given how aggressively the Bank of England is now signalling its inflation-fighting intentions. With such a mature and dominant business, there is no sign that the shares will move quickly in either direction, so locking profits from vesting options has a certain logic.