Wylie in controversial share sale
Graham Wylie, the UK managing director of Sage, has earned £7.1m on the controversial sale of his own stock in the company.
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He sold 4.97 million shares late on Wednesday, while the shares were valued at 142.8p.
But early Tuesday UBS Warburg downgraded its stance on the company from ‘neutral’ to ‘reduce’ and cut its share price target from 136p to 115p.
The Sage price immediately tumbled by 12% to 123p, making it the worst performance on the FTSE 100.
If Wylie had sold his shares after the downgrade, he would have earned £830,000 less.
A spokesman for the company is reported in the national press as saying that Wylie knew nothing of the downgrade, nor did anyone else at Sage.
UBS Warburg no longer provides sight of unpublished research to its clients.