Sutherland in £9.4m Rok share swap

David Sutherland featured in the past month’s biggest share buying deal – it ran to £9.4m and involved the acquisition of shares in Rok.

There were two more big construction-related trades in October, each triggering more than a million pounds in cash.

Sutherland’s deal was a share-swap, a knock-on effect of Rok’s takeover of Tulloch Construction. Formed in 1989, Tulloch was the result of a management buy-out led by Sutherland of Alfred McAlpine’s former Scottish operations.

In September, Rok paid £31m for Tulloch through a mixture of Rok shares (to the tune of £9m) and cash. The result is that Tulloch is now a 4.3% shareholder in Rok and Sutherland is a 52% shareholder in Tulloch. So for Sutherland there’s no money going spare and there’s precious little extra free time as he is now a non-executive director of Rok.

Chairman John Morgan might have sold only a small percentage of his stake in Morgan Sindall, the company he founded, but trousering £2.9m might suggest that an ocean-going yacht could be on order. “No,” said Morgan. “No yacht. I have an 11-foot dingy that cost me £2,000 and I’m more than happy with that.”

After selling 250,000 shares in Morgan Sindall, the chairman’s holding now stands at just over £4m.

Four directors at Severfield-Rowen thought it a good time to sell company shares. Two of them trousered over £300,000 each, but this was small beer compared with the £1.7m that John Severs made in exchange for 110,000 of his shares. He is left with a further 140,000.

October was a rich month for money-making, with 25 deals involving construction directors selling more than £100,000-worth of their own shares. In stark contrast there were just six buyers: four them at Wolseley; one with Artisan (UK); and one at recently- formed PFI Infrastructure Co.

[Contract Journal, 15 November 2006, p 10]