Director dealings: Burberry and BGEO directors take some profits

A pair of directors at Burberry and BGEO Group reaped hefty profits from selling shares on Thursday.

Burberry chief executive Christopher Bailey, who in July agreed to step back to focus solely on his previous role of chief creative officer, stashed £253,500 in his manbag as he sold 18,750 shares in the fashion retailer at a price of 1,352p.

Pascal Perrier, chief of Asian operations since 2013, pocketed almost £1m as he offloaded 72,162 shares at a price of 1,366p apiece.

Although shares in Burberry slumped to a four-year low of just over 1,000p in June, they had perked up to above 1,350p after the board last month looked to lighten the load borne by Bailey with the appointment of Marco Gobbetti, currently boss of LVMH's Céline luxury brand.

Gobbetti is joining in 2017, "as soon as he is contractually able to do so".

Meanwhile, BGEO, the holding company for the Bank of Georgia and its investment arm, recently hit an all-time high of nearly 3,000p on the back of strong recent interim results and optimism about local tax policy.

Murtaz Kikoria, chief executive of the banking arm, took advantage of this to sell 12,800 shares at a price of 2,793.3p to trouser around £357,500.

Mikheil Gomarteli, his deputy in charge of retail banking, banked £477,000 as he sold 17,451 but at a lower price of 2,734.1p.

Last week's half-time results showed growth across retail banking, corporate banking and its investment arm, with post-tax profits up 47.6% to 198.3m Georgian lari (GEL).

The impact of Georgia's tax cut, which will see retained profits untaxed and 15% tax only on distributed profits and will reduce the effective tax rate of the group’s non-banking businesses in 2017 and the entire group in 2019, also led to a number of deferred tax adjustments that increased profits in the first half of 2016 by GEL 66.8m.

Top Director Buys

Gresham House Strategic (GHS)
Director name: Potter,David R W
Amount purchased: 2,941 @ 850.00p
Value: £24,998.50

Octagonal (OCT)
Director name: David Davison,Martin
Amount purchased: 1,250,000 @ 1.45p
Value: £18,125.00

Octagonal (OCT)
Director name: David Davison,Martin
Amount purchased: 1,000,000 @ 1.40p
Value: £14,000.00

Oxford Biomedica (OXB)
Director name: Tallarigo ,Lorenzo
Amount purchased: 62,257 @ 4.24p
Value: £2,639.70

Spirent Communications (SPT)
Director name: Hutchinson,Eric G
Amount purchased: 278 @ 89.75p
Value: £249.50

Spirent Communications (SPT)
Director name: Whiting,Rachel
Amount purchased: 139 @ 89.75p
Value: £124.75

Top Director Sells

Bgeo Group (BGEO)
Director name: Kikoria,Murtaz
Amount sold: 12,800 @ 2,793.30p
Value: £357,542.41

Burberry Group (BRBY)
Director name: Bailey,Christopher
Amount sold: 18,750 @ 1,352.00p
Value: £253,500.01

H&t Group (HAT)
Director name: Nichols,John
Amount sold: 87,397 @ 288.00p
Value: £251,703.37

H&t Group (HAT)
Director name: Fenerty,Stephen
Amount sold: 51,233 @ 288.00p
Value: £147,551.05