The outgoing chief executive of housebuilder Persimmon, Dave Jenkinson, has cashed in £3.4m worth of shares following trades last week.
Jenkinson sold 65,000 shares in the business at £26.9p on 26 August, followed by another 64,307 on 27 August at £26.3p.
He still holds 603,983 shares in the company, worth nearly £15.9m based on Persimmon’s current share price of £26.31 (as of 2 September). He has to hold onto 108,937 and 44,791 shares until at least 15 October 2020 and 3 June 2021 respectively.
Jenkinson is due to be replaced by former National Express boss Dean Finch, who left the travel firm on 31 August this year.
The news of Jenkinson’s multi-million-pound share transactions came shortly after the housebuilder revealed a £216.9m fall in its pre-tax profit in the first half of 2020 (to 30 June) and turnover dropped from £1.8bn to £1.2bn as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.
Persimmon has previously attracted controversy over the amount of money its executives receive. Former group chief executive Jeff Fairburn left the business at the end of 2018 after his remuneration – said to involve a £75m bonus – became a “distraction”. Nearly half of Persimmon’s investors voted against the company’s pay report at its AGM in April that year.
