BSS finance chief adds more shares

BSS Group finance director Roddy Murray has made his third purchase of shares in the plumbing products distributor in the past four months.

Murray spent £20,733 on 7,482 shares at 277.1p each. That took his stake to 101,015 shares.

Murray bought 7,500 shares at 250.197p each on 4 December and 10,000 shares at 311.4p each on 16 September. Murray has invested just short of £71,000 on BSS shares since the middle of September.

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Murray has been on the BSS board since May 2006 and before that he was finance director at menswear retailer Moss Bros.

BSS reported a 5% decline in revenues to £650.6m in the six months to September 2009. Adjusted pre-tax profit fell from £30.4m to £23.3m. That excludes £1.2m of redundancy costs. BSS is trying to offset the weak economy by reducing its operating costs.

The main operations are gaining market share. Analysts expect full year profits of around £46m.

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