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ACP Mezzanine non-executive director Derek Vago has recently topped up his stake in the venture. He bought 300,000 shares at e0.92 (64p) each and 20,000 shares at e0.94 each. This e295,000 investment takes his stake to 1.3 per cent.

Vago built up Nomura International’s asset finance group before deciding to start his own business, ACP Capital, which joined AIM at the beginning of 2006 and spun off ACP Mezzanine later that year. ACP Capital still owns 46.3 per cent of ACP Mezzanine.

Vago owns 6.63 per cent of ACP Capital. He hasn’t bought any shares since July but their price follows a similar pattern to ACP Mezzanine.

Mediasurface plummets – Jackson buys
Software supplier Mediasurface’s shock profit warning upset many investors but one who wasn’t scared off was its chairman Michael Jackson. He bought 1.675 million shares at 8p each, taking his stake to 5.94 per cent.

That was less than half the price they were trading at prior to the admission by the online content management specialist that it had made a loss in the year to September 2007 instead of the profit previously forecast.

There was a shortfall of £2.25 million in revenues from the company’s main software, Morello. Mediasurface claims that orders are now coming through, but it has a lot to prove.

Buying empires
Two directors are showing their confidence in Livermore Investments Group, which was known as Empire Online before it sold its online gaming interests. Chief executive Noam Lanir invested nearly £1.9 million in 5.33 million shares at a cost of 35.5p each. That takes his stake to 47.4 per cent.

Chief investment officer Ron Barron, who joined the company in August, increased his stake to 3.9 per cent by purchasing 2.27 million shares at 35.5p a share. Livermore had a net asset value (NAV) of 92c (45p) a share at the end of August. These shares were purchased at a 21 per cent discount to that NAV. Livermore made trading gains of $9 million in the first half of 2007.

Is Giddens’ periscope up?
John Giddens, chief executive of Hallin Marine Subsea International, sold 400,000 shares in the underwater oil services provider at 90p each. He retains a 19.65 per cent shareholding. Following the sale, Hallin announced a $3.5 million order for a saturation diving system at its new engineering services division. This pushed the share price to 97.5p.

Giddens has spent his working life in the diving industry and he set up the business in 2003. Back in April he sold 108,500 shares at 59p each, which shows the strength of the share price over the past six months.

The performance of the company has warranted that improvement and business is booming, with utilisation rates high. It is trading on 12 times forecast earnings per share for 2007 compared to an oil services sector multiple of around 16.

Hallin requires high levels of capital investment in new underwater vessels so its net debt is set to rise sharply from the 2006 figure of $13.6 million to more than double that by the end of the year.

Selling, not pawning
The directors of pawnbroker H&T recently decided to sell shares rather than pawn any of their possessions to raise money. Chief executive John Nichols sold 400,000 shares, finance director Laurent Genthialon sold 200,000 and Stephen Fenerty disposed of 100,000. They were all sold at 225p a share.

H&T floated in May 2006 at a placing price of 172p. Because of the cash raised in the float there was a sharp improvement in first-half profits from £824,000 to £3.06 million. Full-year profits of around £7 million are forecast, putting the shares, at 248.5p, on 18 times prospective earnings.