Equities First Holdings, er, returns shares to Angle CEO

Remember Equities First Holdings?

The American firm - which specialises in lending to company directors with big shareholdings in AIM-listed companies - hit the headlines following last year's Quindell saga. That's because Quindell and Rob Terry botched an announcement on the UK regulatory news service about the former Quindell boss's purchase and sale of stock. Quindell said Terry was purchasing stock but in fact he was buying some shares by selling a large chunk of shares to Equities First Holdings with a pledge to re-purchase the shareholding in two years. Here is a link to a FT piece on the topic:

https://www.ft.com/content/54049ad4-68b7-11e4-af00-00144feabdc0

So, Equities First Holdings got a bit of a reputation among short sellers as somewhere where Aim company directors dump a load unwanted company stock for hard cash. Other deals done by Equities First Holdings include loans for stock with directors of iGas, IQE and Angle.

Anyway, it turns out that sometimes directors swapping stock for shares actually want the shares back. Today, for example, Andrew Newland - chief executive of medical technology company Angle - bought back the 1.3 million shares he lent to to Equities First Holdings in 2014 at a price of a price of 57p a share. Here is a link to today's announcement:

http://www.investegate.co.uk/angle-plc--agl-/rns/director-s-share-purchase/201610270700115413N/

And last year's announcement:

http://www.investegate.co.uk/angle-plc--agl-/rns/director-s-share-transfer/201410210700248205U/

In fact, I think this might be the first time that Equities First Holdings's UK office has returned stock back to a borrower.....

Date: Thursday, 27 October 2016, 10:00 pm

[Disclaimer - the information on Betaville does not consitute any form of investment recommendation and is not intended to be relied upon by readers in making, or refraining from, any investment decisions].

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