OUTGOING FirstGroup chairman Martin Gilbert has sold one-third of his stake in the troubled bus and rail company as he prepares to quit after 27 years on its board.
Mr Gilbert sold 223,972 shares in the Aberdeen-based company at 108.3115p each, netting him £243,000.
The shares are equivalent to 55% of those he acquired in the recent £615 million fundraising by the group.
Mr Gilbert, retains 476,036 shares in the company with a paper value of £520,000.
With the three-for-two share issue priced at 85p, Mr Gilbert has made a profit of more than £52,000 on the shares he sold.
A chartered accountant who is the founder and chief executive of another Granite City company Aberdeen Asset Management, Mr Gilbert announced he would step down as FirstGroup chairman in May after it revealed its plans for a massive cash call.
FirstGroup, which operates buses in cities including Aberdeen and Glasgow and runs the ScotRail train franchise, said that the fundraising was needed to avoid its debt being downgraded to "junk" status which would have increased its borrowing costs.
FirstGroup was left saddled with £2 billion of debt after its purchase of US company Laidlaw, owner of Greyhound coaches, in 2007.
The problems were brought to a head by the UK Government's decision last summer to reverse the awarding of the West Coast Mainline rail franchise to FirstGroup due to flaws in the bidding process.
Shares in FirstGroup yesterday closed down 1.1p or 1% at 110.8p.
This compares to a peak of 815p in 2007.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article