Diageo COO and CFO trade in shares post-exercise

16th Nov 2012 16:18

The Chief Operating Officer and Chief Financial Officer of Diageo have both sold sizeable stakes in the drinks behemoth after exercising options under its Senior Executive Share Option Plan. COO Ivan Menezes exercised options over 40,813 American Depository shares and subseqently sold 39,813 (equal to 159,252 Diageo ordinary shares) for a total of £2.86m. CFO Deirdre Mahlan exercised options over 15,122 American Depository shares and subseqently sold 12,712 (equal to 50,848 Diageo ordinary shares) for a total of £914,740. The company recently announced that it is to spend over one billion pounds taking a majority stake in Indian spirits firm USL. The firm will initially pay £660m for a 27.4% stake in USL, the biggest spirits company in India. The deal will trigger an obligation on Diageo to launch a mandatory tender offer to the public shareholders of USL. Consequently Diageo has also announced that it will launch a tender offer to acquire a maximum of 37,785,214 shares, which equates to 26% of USL's shares. When the deal is complete Diageo will hold 53.4% of USL at an aggregate cost of around £1.29bn. Broker Nomura said that the deal represents a "very significant medium-term upside potential in India" for Diageo. USL's volumes last year matched Diageo's (121m cases of spirits), but the cost to buy the majority stake (£1.3bn) is a fraction of Diageo's enterprise value at over £50bn. "We see very significant opportunity to add value through premiumising local spirit and leveraging the distribution platform for international spirits, especially Scotch whisky." Top Director BuysAlliance Trust (ATST) Director name: Mr Karin Forseke Amount purchased: 11,900 @ 366.11p Value: £43,567Crawshaw Group (CRAW) Director name: Ms Lynda SherrattAmount purchased: 1,250,000 @ 2.00p Value: £25,000Unite Group (UTG) Director name: Ms Manjit WolstenholmeAmount purchased: 7,300 @ 268.00p Value: £19,564Sierra Rutile Ltd (SRX) Director name: Mr Michael BrownAmount purchased: 20,000 @ 51.75p Value: £10,350Top Director SellsDiageo (DGE) Director name: Mr Ivan MenezesAmount sold: 159,252 @ 1,798.50p Value: £2,864,147Diageo (DGE) Director name: Ms Deirdre MahlanAmount sold: 50,848 @ 1,798.97p Value: £914,740