Directors’ Dealings by Ben Jaglom

Over at AIM newcomer Secure Trust Bank, Irish chief executive officer Paul Lynam, together with non-executive director Carol Sergeant, purchased 6,600 shares in the company at a price of 750p a share in a bout of board buying worth £49,500.

The AIM-quoted heavyweight joined the junior market this October in an IPO that raised £25 million at 720p a share. The company boasted of bringing a ‘back-to-basics’ approach to banking, providing the same services as a traditional retail bank but without any physical branches and with no exposure to credit default swaps on European debt. 

Lynam joined Secure after a 22-year stint at Royal Bank of Scotland, while Sergeant had a 37-year career at bodies including the Bank of England and the Financial Services Authority.

Meanwhile, at mobile banking and payments concern Monitise, youthful ex-professional rugby player and chief executive officer Alastair Lukies sold two million shares in the group at a price of 38.2p a share, netting the enterprising CEO £764,000. 

The company also reported that chief commercial officer Lee Cameron sold 126,000 shares at 39.5p, receiving £49,770 from the deal. Monitise has fared impressively throughout the economic downturn, having seen its share price rise by more than ten times from a 2009 low of 3p.

There was also activity at pawnbroking specialist H&T Group as non-executive director Malcolm Berryman snapped up 2,000 shares at 317p a share in a deal worth a total of £6,340. 

Berryman, a former chief executive at insurers Liverpool Victoria and Crown Financial Management, has no doubt been cheered by the performance of the group, which has seen the share price at the AIM 50 constituent more than double since 2009 amid a buoyant gold-purchasing market.

Mixed trading patterns at PR giant 

Adding to the activity on AIM, PR heavyweight Next Fifteen Communications FD David Dewhurst sold 25,298 shares for 84p a share, while chairman Richard Eyre, a former director of Guardian Media Group, the publisher of The Guardian newspaper, purchased 29,500 shares for 84p a share.

Next Fifteen has performed solidly during a torrid period for listed media companies, focusing its efforts on building up its portfolio of ‘digital agencies’, having made a number of US-based acquisitions over the past year.

Infection control venture Tristel also saw activity, with chairman Francisco Soler, a knight of the order of Malta and a chairman of the Bank of Miami, purchasing 50,000 shares at 39.6p a share, taking his ownership in the group to 19.06 per cent through a range of investment vehicles including the ‘World Financial Trading Corp’ and the ‘Windsor International Corporation’.

At the interestingly named Surface Transforms, a manufacturer of carbon fibre materials, non-executive director Richard Gledhill purchased 400,000 shares at 9p a share in a deal worth £36,000. The industrial engineering constituent has had a bumpy few years, having sunk from a 2010 high of 25p.

The Philippines-focused Medusa Mining saw chairman Geoffrey Davis sell one million shares at a price of AUS$6.72 for what was described as ‘the payment of personal income tax and to provide funds for charitable undertaking and medical research’.

The company, which moved from the junior market to the full list this October, revealed earlier in the year that one of its miners was involved in a ‘very unfortunate accident’ that led to his death, remarking that activity at the mine was temporarily suspended while an investigation was carried out, something it argues indicates that it ‘prioritises employee safety above production’.