Even as the dust raised by investors over the insider trading in shares of Access Bank Plc, involving Herbert Wigwe, its Group Managing Director and Chief Executive, is yet to settle, the bank in a filing to the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE), on Wednesday announced the further sale of 15,530,800 units of the bank for N162.868m from his indirect holdings via Trust and Capital Limited.
The latest share sale by Wigwe was done, according to the notification by Sunday Ekwochi, the bank’s company secretary, on Friday, January 17, 2020, when a total of 13.8m were crossed for N10.45 per share at a total value of N144.21m; while another 1,730,800 units traded on Monday, January 20, 2020, at N10.78 each, worth N18.658m.
These bring the total value of share sale by Wigwe in recent times to 71.13m shares worth N460.868m, considering that 55.6m units were sold from Wigwe’s indirect holding through Trust and Capital Limited before Wednesday.
Before then, there had been four different instances of trading in the CEO’s share, including 3.61m shares at N10.80 each on January 10; 20.14m units at N10.70 on January 13; 9.24m shares for N10.56 each on January 14; and 22.63m shares at N10.22 per unit on January 15. An additional 28.86m shares were sold at N10.32 on January 16.
Investdata, on Wednesday, received several phone calls from worried investors weaving webs of conspiracy theories around the GMD’s decision to sell some of his shares. There are persons who wonder whether the plans by Wigwe to sell down necessitated the bank’s decision to recently cancel the closed period it announced on December 30. The closed period was to have become effective from January 1 to 29, 2020, when directors, employees, persons discharging managerial responsibility, advisers of the company and their connected persons may not deal in the bank’s shares subject to extant rules and regulations.
This was suspended via a January 8, 2020 notice and resumption of normal transaction on the bank’s shares, followed by a string of “share dealings by an insider.”