BA Directors Dumping Millions of Shares
 

Over the last 2-3 weeks at least 7 BA directors and a wife have disposed of approximately 2 million shares. Some of these options are from the Executive Share Option plan and Long Term Incentive Plan, others are privately held shares.
These 'director’s dealings' are seen as very clear indicators of the future direction of the share price or at least reflect the sentiment of the company directors towards their stock. The BA share price has shown good gains over the year and is currently around £5.00.
There have also been several very large transactions by The British Airways Employee Benefits Trust (sales and purchases). Willie Walsh has not sold any but I would suggest that with 7 key directors (and a wife) off loading options any private investor would be wise to follow their lead.
All the information is readily available via the London Stock Exchange.

BA's future....
 

Good point Airbrake. By coincidence I arrived at T4 from Chicago at 0930 yesterday morning on BA298. Having been kept onboard for almost 30 minutes (no stairs again), my fellow passengers were herded onto a coach by a screeching and sarcastic BA fish-wife who seemed to think that she was herding swine into a pen. Her attitude and rudeness were of unspeakably vile proportions. Those passengers visiting our country for the first time will have formed an early and very unfavourable impression of the UK and the world's favourite airline.

To compound the issue, everyone's cases were then lost for an hour and the 2 BA customer service gents at the desk next to carousel 1 chatted for several minutes before acknowledging my presence. Should I mention the late departure from ORD (again)? Or the useless in-flight entertainment on the 777? Or perhaps the lamentable orange-juice and cake pauper's breakfast?

My modest shareholding was liquidated with 30 minutes of arriving home and WW's shambles will never see another of my £££s.

Rant over bm

I think you will find that BA in their quest to be 'Fit for 5' are trying to make T4 a shambles so that when T5 does open it will all be a pleasant surprise. In doing this, working agreements with the baggage handlers/loaders are being 'tweaked' so that being paid for an 8 hour shift does actually equal 8 hours work. It's a novel concept I know. They (the loaders), unsurprisingly, are not happy and are making sure that their progress unloading aircraft is, shall we say, 'glacial'.

The winter of discontent has begun.

That's because the BA Directors know the Company is about to buy Iberia before Lufthansa or AF jump in. Once this happens of course, shares will slide.... !:uhoh:

The Sunday Times Dec 10th 2006, has an article suggesting that a group may bid for BA along the lines of the Qantas bid -and that would value BA shares at about £6 and also make it ripe for splitting up and profiteering from the sell-offs, which may explain the Directors haste in selling before the sh1t hits the fan(s) - something that happened recently at Airbus, n'est-ce pas?

Just looking back .....

4 years ago the shares were trading at 86p .......

the last trade I have for today 501p .....

You can work out the % increase yourself but it's very large indeed .... :p

http://www.citywire.co.uk/Shares/dnc...15402959039622

Many small shareholders don't trade, they just hold until company sold.
So what was the original flotation price? Around 125p I think. So divide profi by years held and you get a more modest annual return

125p in February 1987 .......

at 501p today it's 6.98% pa compound ....

It's the guys who trade that make the real money .... that's for sure

Wonder if "they" are worried about a strike as they "know" the pension deal will not be up to scratch?:suspect:

Dear Airbrake,

if, as you suggest, these BA directors are selling because they know or think, using inside information, that things are about to take a dive.... then this would be a serious criminal offence.

I would suggest that they would not dream of selling in such circumstances, it would be grossly foolhardy as they are almost certain to be found out. the stock market is well used to looking out for such timed sales by insiders.

more likely surely is that the share option date has just passed, the options are exercised and the recipients tax advisors tell them to sell now and buy a bigger house or pocket the £££.

this would explain why the timing of the sales by several directors are so close.

I am not a fan of BA by the way, I have found them to be totally awful.

pvm

ppvvmm you are of course correct.
The Directors can do what ever they want outside of the company closed periods. However, the number of directors and volume of shares involved is to great to be a coincidence. I would be very interested to know if there had been a Board meeting mid November!
Regardless of the timing, Directors of companies do not sell their shares or take options without good reason.
Out of interest I see that yesterday (12 Dec) another 24 000 shares were sold by British Airways Employee Benefits Trustees at a price of £5.07 each.

Well after 15 long years of keeping my share certificates safe I have just sold my 2100 shares after reading this thread......

What a roller coaster, down to nearly a pound once and at 7 quid just one month before my option matured 10 years ago and then started a never ending slide....

And no dividend since I can remember. Better off in the Woolwich !!! I am jumping ship too before the pension deficit debacle implodes and takes the company profits with it .......

As an outside, I would agree that a share option date has just passed however, this only serves to reinforce the suggestion that directors of companies should have to place all shares into a blind trust for the duration of their tenure.

Just to bring this back to the top, another BA director has sold over 40 000 shares on 15 Dec 06. This brings the total to 8 directors who have sold shares within the last 4 weeks.

More BA Directors Sell Options\shares
 

The total number of BA directors who have sold shares in the last month now totals 10. Yesterday another director sold over 250000 options grossing over £1,125000. The negative PR caused by fog induced cancellations may have been a catalyst for the sale but he is following the well trodden path of other Directors who have disposed of their options in recent weeks
Details available from the LSE.

You've posted about this before I believe.

You seem to have some kind of point, but I am not sure what it is.

They have sold shares/options, so what ?

"the negative PR caused by fog induced cancellations may have been a catalyst for the sale"

I doubt it. Why would you sell at a time when negative publicity is impacting the company and therefore also possibly the share price (I haven't looked to see what impact this has had on the share price).

I know everyone loves a conspiracy theory, but the only reason I can see for them selling is that they think the value is at a peak (more or less) and in line with many analysts etc they think a slowdown/uncertainty may be on the way.

You seem to paint it as a situation whereby they know something nuclear that is about to affect BA in a very siginificant and negative way.
If so, you are indirectly accusing them of insider dealing. Is that what you are trying to say ?

Manfred

It's either insider trading or a helluva coincidence!

Could be either.:rolleyes:

Nothing to do with the threats of indusrial action from BASSA and BALPA members or the dreadful PR generated by recent events?

Not really.

There is nothing suspect in thinking that your share price is more or less at a peak and that economic conditions (note I do not say internal BA issues) are such that the share price is, in your opinion, likely to weaken.

The fact that 10 directors have done this may just mean that they are spotting what to many people seem to be obvious signs of an impending slowdown.
they are reacting accordingly, as is their right.

I'd be careful about accusing people of a criminal offence myself, as it is defamatory.

I am in no way connected to BA, I would like to add.

Manfred, when 10 directors of any company sell shares any investor worth his salt should take note. As mentioned else where, the number of directors selling and volume of shares traded should act as a good hint for anybody else to probably do the same.
As for the current share price it is largely unchanged this week, and I doubt whether anybody in the city would see a few days of weather induced disruption as a good reason to start selling stock. However, directors selling is a very different matter.
So no conspiracy theories or insider trading cover ups just simple economics.

I'm not connected to BA either!