Broking boss makes £2.6m profit

Evolution chief executive Alex Snow has sold £5.2m of shares after being awarded 4.59m shares from two company option schemes after the vesting conditions for the shares were met.

The Evolution Group Plc 2000 Executive Share Option Scheme issued 3.09m shares to Snow, Of these, 2.026m did not have any performance criteria, while the award of the rest was based on share price performance. These shares were acquired at 58.67p a share. The total cost was £1.81m.

The other 1.5m shares were issued under the Evolution Group Plc 2001 Executive Share Option Scheme - following the achievement of share price performance criteria - and they cost 52.3p each. The total cost was £785,000.

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That means that Snow made a £2.6m profit on the share sales, which were at 163p a share. The share price is the highest it has been for more than three years.

He retains 1.4m of the shares that he was awarded. This still leaves Snow with a higher percentage of the company. He owns 5.6m shares, which is equivalent to 2.42% of Evolution. Snow has taken up all the shares he had under option at the time of the 2008 annual report.

Last week, the broker announced that its 2009 profits would be better than expected. Corporate activity has increased in the second half of the year. Funds under management have grown to £5bn at the end of September 2009.

In April, Snow raised nearly £927,000 by selling shares at 114p each. That followed the exercise of options over 2m shares at 1p each - a total cost of £20,000. Snow said that the sale proceeds paid for the options and associated tax costs.

That means that Snow has made more than £3.5m profit from share sales this year, while retaining 2.57m shares he has been awarded.

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