Boss Geddes nets £1.15m from sale of Direct Line shares

Direct Line chief executive Paul Geddes has sold £1.15m-worth of shares in the insurer.

 Paul Geddes was awarded 717,300 shares under a 2010 long-term bonus plan set up by Direct Line’s former owner RBS.

 Direct Line announced yesterday that he had sold 337,638 of them for 339.81p apiece in order to meet a tax and national insurance liability arising from the award.

 Following the transaction, Geddes held on to the remaining 379,662 and now holds a total of 651,134 shares in the group.

 Insurance Times reported last year that Geddes was paid a £760,000 base salary in 2014, which represented no increase on the previous year’s level.

 But he was also awarded a £835,000 bonus, up on £760,000 in 2012, the bulk of which was accounted for by shares he had received under the long-term RBS incentive scheme.

 Direct Line chief financial officer John Reizenstein sold 75,969 shares, which represented just under half of the stake he had been awarded under the long-term bonus plan, netting him £257,600.

 Jon Greenwood, managing director of Direct Line’s commercial arm NIG, sold 49,521 shares for £168,312, which again accounted for slightly less than half the stake he had been awarded through the bonus plan.

 In addition, Direct Lines’ claims and business services managing director Steve Maddock sold 63,027 shares for £214, 169, while Angela Morrison, chief information officer, earned £109,922 from the sale of 32,920 shares.

 In its full year results, published last week, Direct Line announced that its profits before tax were £456.8m in 2014, up 12.2% from 2013. The results also showed that the group’s gross written premium was down 3.8% to £3.1bn.