Heartland director sells shares

Investors often react negatively to a director of a listed company selling shares but some sales are more noteworthy than others.

Monday, 16 January 2012

by Jenny Ruth

A notice filed with the stock exchange yesterday showed Heartland New Zealand director Graham Kennedy sold 148,560 shares in the company on market between December 5 and January 4 for a total of $71,808.

Kennedy says the shares were held by family trusts and were sold because Heartland hasn't paid any dividends since it listed a year ago and the trusts needed cashflow.

The sale followed a rearrangement late last year of shares held by family trusts - a stock exchange notice in December showed Kennedy transferred 100,000 Heartland shares from one family trust to another of which he isn't a trustee.

He hasn't sold any of his own shares, Kennedy says. The annual report shows Kennedy owned 392,023 shares beneficially at June 30 last year, persons associated with him held 2,830 shares and there were another 2.08 million shares held non-beneficially. The latter are those held by trusts of which he is trustee.

Kennedy also participated in Heartland's share purchase plan last August which partly financed its acquisition of PGG Wrightson Finance, paying $45,000.

Heartland was formed from the merger of Marac Finance, CBS Canterbury and Southern Cross Building Society.

Kennedy was a director of CBS Canterbury for 24 years and was its chairman between 2002 and 2008.

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