Tesco boss Dave Lewis has purchased a stake in the retailer, 24 hours after the board lifted a ban on trading shares.
- Tesco boss Lewis buys almost 100,000 shares in the grocer
- Chairman John Allan and finance boss Alan Stewart also snap up stakes
- Comes 24 hours after Lewis spoke about a board-level ban on trading shares
Lewis heads a raft of five directors who have acquired a stake in the embattled grocer. He bought 99,950 shares, which cost about £200,000 in total.
The purchase was revealed a day after he told journalists at the supermarket giant’s interim results briefing that he would “definitely” buy shares if he could, but that the board had agreed to exclude themselves from trading while the retailer was conducting a portfolio review because it was “the right corporate governance”.
Chairman John Allan bought 50,891 shares, while finance boss Alan Stewart has snapped up 50,000 shares.
Senior independent director Richard Cousins and non-executive Mikael Ohlsson acquired 17,357 and 5,000 shares respectively.
Exclusion from buying shares
Speaking to the press yesterday after unveiling a 55% drop in operating profit to £354m during the 26 weeks to August 29, Lewis said: “We are in possession of quite considerable inside information about what may or may not happen in the Tesco group.
“Add to that the regulatory review, which we have to deal with confidentially, and we as a board took a decision that while those things were ongoing, we would exclude ourselves from being able to trade Tesco shares.
“We operate under that restriction to this day because we think that is the right corporate governance to have when you are going through this sort of turnaround and have these sorts of issues.
“A lot of people want to buy shares in Tesco, they are just not allowed to.”
Lewis was responding to a question as to why he had not purchased shares in the retailer, following David Potts’ decision to acquire a stake in Morrisons after he took the reins in March.
A Tesco spokesman confirmed the directors’ share purchases “followed the publication of our interim results and the conclusion of our portfolio review”.
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