MEMBERS of the family of Sir Ian Wood and charities could receive massive payouts in future after trusts set up for their benefit sold shares in the oil services company that he built for £365 million.

Aberdeen-based Wood Group announced that trusts established for the benefit of members of the Wood family and for “certain charitable causes” had offloaded 58 million shares in the company. These represent 10.6% of the total shares in the company.

The trusts were the most enthusiastic respondents to a tender offer to buy back shares which Wood launched as part of its plan to distribute £1 billion of the proceeds of the sale of the group’s well support operations to GE for $2.8bn (£1.7bn).

They accounted for 90% of the 66 million shares that were tendered by investors in total. The offer will involve an outlay of £412m for Wood Group.

The company will distribute around £600m to remaining shareholders through an issue of B shares.

The trusts reduced their holdings in Wood Group from 11.7% of the total shares in issue to 1.1%.

The beneficiaries of the trusts include Sir Ian’s sons Nick, Graham and Gareth. All three run businesses which have been started with some help from trusts set up by Sir Ian.

Sir Ian, who is chairman of Wood Group, said his grandchildren, nephews and nieces are also beneficiaries.

Asked whether the share sales would trigger big distributions by the trusts, Sir Ian said: “There are no plans right now in that direction.”

Decisions about distributions will take into account potential charitable opportunities and business openings for “the boys”, he added.

The trusts are managed by independent trustees who have discretion to run them in what they believe to be the best way for the people and institutions that are nominated as beneficiaries.

The Wood Family Trust has focused on developing economic opportunities in Sub-Saharan Africa and working with young people in the UK.

Sir Ian said the trusts would pay tax on the proceeds of the disposals in the normal way.

A pioneer of the North Sea oil services industry, Sir Ian told The Herald it would be “entirely wrong” to conclude that the sale signalled lack of confidence in the prospects of the group.

“It’s not in any way a reflection of their (the trusts) views on Wood Group. They are very pleased to continue to be good strong holders.”

He said there had been considerable pressure from the lawyers who advise the trusts for them to reduce the proportion of their assets that are invested in Wood Group for the sake of prudence.

“More than 85% of the total value of the trusts’ assets are held in Wood Group shares,” explained Sir Ian. “Over the last couple of years there has been a clear understanding that if opportunities arose, that the trusts would diversify their holdings. They still have over £30m (worth of) Wood Group shares in their portfolio, that’s a very big holding in one company.”

In May the group said the trustees planned to tender at least 20.4 million shares to diversify their “highly concentrated position” in Wood Group Shares within their investment portfolios.

Sir Ian noted that he had not sold any of his shares in response to the tender offer. He has 27.6 million shares, 5.8% of the total.

Members of the Wood family still hold around 11% of the company’s shares in total.

The company’s chief executive, Allister Langlands, said: “The fact that there was very little tendering of shares from the general shareholder base is a good vote of confidence in the company.”

Wood Group will distribute £638m through an issue of B shares to investors, in proportion to their holdings after the tender offer.

Mr Langlands said this would give investors the opportunity to choose whether to take their share of the distribution as income or as capital for tax purposes.

The company purchased 65,911,929 ordinary shares for 625p following the tender offer. These will be cancelled. Following the transaction there are 474,911,204 shares in issue.

Shares in Wood Group closed unchanged at 625.5p.