Quindell crashes

Quindell's share price has plunged by a fifth Tuesday. With the only announcement another share purchase by boss Rob Terry, the slump can only be sentiment-driven. Even a wave of director share-buying in recent days has failed to prevent the sell-off. We've made a series of calls to investigate, but it seems there's a radio silence.

The Quindell teams at both house brokers - Cenkos Securities and Canaccord Genuity - are, we're told, in meetings. Other sources say they have heard nothing. We'll keep digging, but in the meantime it's worth running through what we do know.

Three weeks ago, Quindell shares were trading at 169p, now they're less than half that at just 79p, their lowest since summer 2012. A complicated director share-buying scheme, whereby management borrowed money from Equities First Holdings using existing shares as collateral, confused the market and continues to spook investors.

We've included a table (below) of every director deal since the third-quarter trading statement a month ago. As you can see, bosses have bought over 2.2 million shares between them at a cost of almost £2.7 million.

However, investors have clearly not subscribed to the widely-accepted rule that directors know the companies they run better than anyone else. Typically, they'll  take their cue from senior management and piggyback director share buying. Not in this case, it seems. It's worth noting that during the summer, Mr Fielding paid over 236p each for 16,889 shares.

This article is for information and discussion purposes only and does not form a recommendation to invest or otherwise. The value of an investment may fall. The investments referred to in this article may not be suitable for all investors, and if in doubt, an investor should seek advice from a qualified investment adviser.