Insurance bosses cash in £5m after share price rise

BOARD members at insurer

Beazley cashed in almost £4.9m of shares after a recent surge in the stock.

Five executives at the firm sold share options, offloading more than 1.2m shares in the business, in total.

Chief executive of the insurance firm Andrew Horton sold 352,527 shares at an average price of 424p each, totalling almost £1.5m.

His colleagues Neil Maidment, chief underwriting officer, and Clive Washbourn, head of marine, each sold 236,928 shares.

Some of the shares were part of a deferred share award scheme while the rest were part of the company’s long-term incentive plan.

Beazley soared earlier this month after a confident update where it announced plans to expand in the US and Canada and to hire more staff in Ireland. The stock is up almost 10pc so far this year.

Yesterday shares edged up 0.5pc, or 2.3p, to 427.6p.

The FTSE 100 finished down 0.3pc, or 24.49 points, at 7277.92.

Challenger banks were in focus as Panmure Gordon gave its thoughts on the sector.

The stockbroker said that specialist lenders were in a sweet spot as large banks focused on cost cutting.

Some of the upstart banks have been shunned since the Brexit vote amid fears that the economy will slow down and concerns that the new stamp duty levy on second homes would hit lending.

But Panmure points out that smaller lenders only need tiny market share gains to significantly boost their assets. Its favourite stock in the sector is

Shawbrook, which it said was the most specialised of the smaller lenders. The bank focuses on small and medium- sized businesses. Shares yesterday jumped 2.3pc, or 6p, to 266p. Panmure put a ‘ buy’ rating on

Virgin Money, which it said was the truest challenger as its business most closely resembled high street banks. Virgin shares were off 1.6pc, or 5.7p, to 342.3p. The broker has a ‘sell’ rating on

CYBG (down 2.9pc, or 8.3p, to 278.1p), which it said was reminiscent of the low growth and continual restructuring costs at large banks, and Metro Bank (down 1.7pc, or 64p, to 3605p) which looked overvalued.

BHP Billiton slipped as it announced non-executive director Pat Davies had stepped down from the board.

Davies will leave on April 6 to focus on his family business and pursue other interests. He has been on the board since 2012.

Grant King will join as non-executive director from March 1. The 62-year-old was chief executive at Australian energy retailer Origin Energy from 2000 until last year as is president of the Business Council of Australia. BHP shares lost 0.4pc, or 6p, to 1414p.

Custodian REIT edged up after it sold a pub in Portsmouth. The building is let to JD Wetherspoon on a lease which runs until 2040.

Custodian has offloaded the site for £1.7m, some £200,000 more than it was valued at the end of the year. The real estate investment trust first bought the pub as part of a portfolio in August 2014.

It said it would use the proceeds to fund new acquisitions better suited to its long-term investment strategy. Shares climbed 0.5pc, or 0.5p, to 109.75p.

Another real estate investor also climbed after announcing a sale.

McKay Securities has offloaded Pinehurst Park in Farnborough, Hampshire, for £5.9m.

The group bought it in 2012 for £3.5m, selling part of it a year later for £1.2m after obtaining planning consent to allow homes to be built on the site.

This latest sale sees McKay dispose of the rest of its stake in the site – an office building which is let to IBM for £750,000 a year.

McKay would have made a total of £6.4m from the two sales – a return of 72pc on total costs. Shares nudged up 0.2pc, or 0.38p, to 204.38p.