A very unpopular move by the CEO during the week offloading...

A very unpopular move by the CEO during the week offloading 250,000 shares in his own company – a bit of a low act no doubt about it - undermining the share price like that. However if you look at it from his personal point of view (as selfish and inappropriate as that might be) he just had too much personal exposure to WPL (nearly $15.6 million worth in directly and indirectly held shares prior to this offload)

He picks them up (through his executive remuneration arrangements) like the rest of us pick up the milk and bread.....$millions upon $millions (see extracts below from the last WPL annual report)





So he’s gone to his financial adviser and his financial adviser has said “Pete - mate - I’ve been looking at your overall financial situation.....you know ..... the diversity of your investments and...aah ....you’re seriously overweight oil and gas!”

So he’s had to offload a few.

He’s still got $10m or so in WPL shares - so it’s not as if he’s got no skin left in the game – in fact he still has way more shares than any of the other senior execs.

So.....just a little blip really. It might mean the stock now temporarily settles at $18 or $19 instead of $20 but I’m still confident this is a medium term $30 stock if you’re prepared to be patient.