chairman bramson pours 200k into f and c

Edward Bramson, the man renowned for the activist ousting of F&C’s former chairman, Nick MacAndrew, has topped up his shares in the company by almost £200,000 in the past few days, Portfolio Adviser can reveal.

chairman bramson pours 200k into f and c

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Bramson, who is now chairman and director at the asset manager, bought the shares through his company Sherborne Investor – the same firm he used to stage the spectacular boardroom coup back in February 2011.

At the time he had a 17% stake in F&C and used an extraordinary general meeting as his platform to get rid of MacAndrew, with 65% of shareholders voting to axe the former chairman and 70% backing rival Bramson as successor.

Since then Bramson has completed a stint as interim executive chairman of the firm following the departure of CEO Alain Grisay in October 2011 after ten years with the company. He reverted to non-executive chairman in December 2012 when Richard Wilson was promoted to CEO from elsewhere in the group.

Bramson has spearheaded a strategic overhaul of F&C, which has included a move to focus on the firm’s core institutional business, as well as targeting direct to consumer marketing.

He has previously derided F&C’s acquisitions of Thames River Capital and property investor REIT as ill-timed and only “modestly profitable”.

In the firm’s latest results F&C announced a £5bn drop in AUM from £101.1bn to £95.2bn, while underlying pre-tax profit was up £5m from £47m in 2011 to £52.4m in 2012.

New CEO, Wilson said the company had made “significant progress towards its strategic goals in 2012” and had substantially completed its restructuring.

Bramson has topped his shares up over four consecutive market days since last Thursday, amounting to 180,000 shares worth £193,222.

Since this time last year the company’s share price has increased by 51% to 107.55p, during which time its low was 64p.

F&C was unavailable to comment.

 

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