Results season beefs up trade

Catherine Livingstone wasted little time in jumping into the Telstra Corporation market following the group's full-year results.

The chairman paid $5.09 a share a couple of days after the company disclosed earnings had improved 13 per cent

Geoffrey Cousins put $102,300 into the stock at $5.12 a share.

Directors' trades are starting to flow again as the results season gets into full stride.

Engineering and construction services concern Downer EDI reported that earnings improved 10 per cent for the year and tipped flat earnings for the current year.

Flat earnings or not, non-executive directors Kerry Sanderson and Annabelle Chaplain each bought 10,000 shares at $3.90 and $4.16 a share respectively.

Elsewhere, a clutch of directors of CuDeco, which is developing its Rocklands copper project, bought scrip following a substantial share price fall.

Wayne McCrae - the man behind the company and a regular supporter of the stock at much higher levels - bought at $1.42, and non-executive director Hongwei Liu also added to recent purchases.

David Taylor and Peter Hutchison also bought shares in recent days. They paid anywhere between $1.42 and $1.66. Three months ago, the shares were fetching $4.

The overall scorecard registered $2.3 million to $13.5 million in favour of sellers.

Accounting for a decent chunk of that were interests associated with Joakim Sundell, a non-executive director of financial services software provider GBST Holdings.

Chairman John Puttick also let some go. The stock is selling at $2.55, compared with 80¢ one

year ago.

Among the more extraordinary director filings this week was that of UGL managing director Richard Leupen.

As part of his contract with the engineering and construction group, he gets $500,000 worth of scrip each year for assisting the board with finding a successor to his good self.

Unbelievable, but true.