Sims director scraps shares
Scrap metal recycling isn’t the sexiest business around but it sure can be profitable. Sims Group has been involved in the scrap metal game since 1917, expanding from its local base to now operate 120 sites on four continents.
The company has been one of the beneficiaries of the global commodities boom and is set for another year of record earnings. This bout of success is also flowing through to the company’s executives with boss Jeremy Sutcliffe recently selling a swag of stock for a tidy profit.
Several notices
Sutcliffe has been responsible for several recent directors’ interest notices accounting for his dividend reinvestment, performance rights and on-market trades. The largest transaction was the on-market trade with Sutcliffe selling 14,543 shares at an average price of $25.53 for proceeds of $371,241.
One of our gripes about the company is the relative lack of share ownership by the directors. Apart from executive director John Neu who acquired his $866m interest in the company when he sold his business to Sims in 2005, the other board members have relatively small holdings.
For example, Sutcliffe’s pay packet last year was in excess of $3.6m, more than two and a half times his shareholding of around $1.4m. With this rather low ratio of compensation to ownership, we’d prefer to see him adding to his holding rather than bailing out.