Papers like the Financial Times have taken to publishing tables of directors’ purchases and sales of shares in their own companies – if the insiders reckon the shares are cheap or that it’s time to sell, they may know something the rest of us don’t – but while it’s all very nice to be able to snap up shares that you think are a snip in your own company, you have to find some very real money from somewhere to pay for them, and many supposedly wealthy people are only wealthy on paper, with much of their wherewithal tied up in the shares of just one or two companies: Sir Ernie Harrison had shares in both Racal Electronics Plc and Vodafone Group Plc, but in order to find the cash to buy shares in the latter in the face of the failed Williams Holdings Plc bid, he had to sell shares in the latter he sold 1.5m Vodafone shares in September to raise UKP5m, and has now sold the balance of his holding in the firm where he remains chairman, 580,000 shares, raising UKP2m – but UKP5m of that has already gone on the shares he bought in Racal Electronics Plc.
