Chairman’s £1m vote of confidence in Hut

The chairman of The Hut Group has snapped up almost £1m of shares three months after joining the embattled firm.

In a vote of confidence in the online retail group, former ITV boss Charles Allen bought 1.15m shares in ThG for 86p each.

The City heavyweight, 65, joined ThG in March as founder Matt Moulding looked to beef up the board and win back the trust of the stock market.

And he will be hoping the purchase of the shares will prove to be a canny move given the collapse in value.

ThG listed at 500p a share in late 2020. The stock soon peaked at 800p but has been in freefall ever since.

however, in a sign that some observers still believe they could be worth more than they are currently valued at, ThG has attracted takeover interest in recent weeks. The firm last month rejected a 170p a share offer that valued it at £2bn from Belerion Capital and King Street Capital, saying the price tag ‘significantly undervalued the company and its future prospects’.

Property mogul Nick Candy was also rumoured to be interested in snapping up the company behind brands such as Lookfantastic and Myprotein. Any future takeover could leave Allen sitting on a healthy profit.

But the purchase did little to help ThG shares in the shortterm, and they were down 4.6pc, or 3.9p, at 81.32p towards the end of trading.

In the third-straight day of gains, the FTSE 100 rose 0.9pc, or 65.09 points, to 7323.41 and the FTSE 250 edged up 0.17pc, or 32.32 points, to 19,351.27. Global stocks appeared to welcome the news that China will reduce its Covid quarantine period to seven days for overseas visitors. In europe, France’s CAC was up 0,64pc and Germany’s DAX added 0.35pc.

But across the Atlantic, there was gloomier news as Jefferies said the US would fall into a recession next year.

Taking in the assessment, the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 1.56pc, while the S&P 500 lost 2,91pc, and the Nasdaq Composite collapsed 2.98pc.

Back in London, the top index was buoyed by investors looking to cash in on defence stocks.

Rolls-Royce gained 6.5pc, or 5.33p, to 87.14p and BAE Systems added 3.5pc, or 28p, to 826.6p. And mid- cap defence firm Babcock soared 6.2pc, or 18.8p, to 320p.

hargreaves Lansdown analyst Susannah Streeter said: ‘As warnings come thick and fast from military chiefs about the threat to peace in europe, the expectation is that spending on defence will take a much larger slice of government budgets going forward. With commitments to rapidly increase the number of troops on alert, military hardware requirements will be higher and that’s helping lift the share price of defence contractors.’

Blue- chip energy stocks also helped to lift the FTSe 100.

With oil prices creeping back up towards $120 a barrel, shares in Shell rose 3.1pc, or 64.5p, to 2177p and BP was up 1.4pc, or 5.45p, to 397.05p. Shares in Harbour Energy, which has operations in the North Sea and southeast Asia, added 3.3pc, or 11.9p, to 375p.

The easing of Covid rules in China also helped to push up the Asia- focused insurer Prudential, sending shares up 4.3pc, or 43.5p, to 1052.5p. This was the same for mining stocks as Glencore added 1.7pc, or 7.5p, to 460.25p, Rio Tinto rose 2pc, or 99p, to 5150p and Anglo American climbed 0.7pc, or 23p, to 3156.5p.

AJ Bell investment director Russ Mould said this could be a sign that the strict Covid measures could be relaxed in future.