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Connaught director suspended after selling shares before profit warning

22 Jul 10 A Connaught director has been suspended pending an internal inquiry after selling hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of shares in the company just days before a profit warning.

A Connaught director has been suspended pending an internal inquiry after selling hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of shares in the company just days before a profit warning.

Peter Jones, managing director of the construction and maintenance group's northern business, made £264,953 by selling the shares on 21 May and 23 June.

But on 25 June, Connaught issued a profit warning, anticipating a £80m fall in revenue this year, after which its share price fell by more than two thirds.

Jones is registered with the City watchdog as a "person discharging managerial responsibility", meaning that both company and regulator consider him to have in-depth company information and must seek permission each time he deals in the company's shares.

The director will now be suspended while Connaught conducts an internal inquiry into the timing of the transactions, The Construction Index understands.

The news is the latest in a series of problems to affect the public sector outsourcing specialist. The firm is currently without a chief executive officer, after previous boss Mark Tincknell stepped down two weeks after the share price warning.

At its last interim results in April, the firm's profit slumped 21% to £10.7m.

There are growing concerns about firms with high public sector workloads being vulnerable to the planned cuts by the Coalition Government.

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