Kingfisher CEO ditches exercised options

Kingfisher's Chief Executive Officer, Ian Cheshire, has exercised options over 164,144 shares and subsequently sold 143,040 of them less than a fortnight after the B&Q owner admitted that miserable weather in the UK and northern Europe had a serious impact on footfall in the first half of its financial year.

Cheshire sold the shares for 269.62p each, pocketing a total of £385,664, leaving him with 1.15m shares in the company.

The firm put the impact on profits of the soggy weather at more than £30m, as it reported a 15.5% decline in adjusted pre-tax profit to £371m in the 26 weeks to July 28th from £439m the year before. That was some way below the £395m broker Charles Stanley had been expecting and a bit shy of the £280m Credit Suisse had forecast. Reported profit before tax was down 16.9% to £364m from £438m.

Exchange rate movements did not help matters either, with the group taking a £25m hit from translating the euro and Polish zloty back into sterling for reporting purposes.

Just last week Kingfisher beefed up its board with the appointment of three new executive directors.

Karen Witts, who was named as Group Finance Director in July, will take a seat on the board on October 1st when she joins the company.

Sitting around the table she will find new boys Euan Sutherland and Philippe Tible. Sutherland is Kingfisher's Group Chief Executive, while Tible is the firm's Divisional Chief Executive Officer, Castorama and Brico Depot responsible for Kingfisher's businesses in France, Poland, Russia and Spain.

Source : Sharecast
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