JPM Caz sells Ross’s shares worth 75m
STRUGGLING entrepreneur David Ross raised around £75m yesterday through the sale of shares in Carphone Warehouse and Big Yellow Group.
Sources said that JP Morgan Cazenove sold the vast majority of Ross’s 9.02 per cent shareholding in storage group Big Yellow for around £36m and 2.6 per cent of Carphone Warehouse, which he co-founded with Charles Dunstone, for nearly £39m.
But it was not clear whether Ross was selling the shares himself – either for personal reasons or as part of a refinancing of his commercial property business, Kandahar Real Estate – or if Cazenove was liquidating positions it held as collateral.
Ross was forced to resign from the boards of Carphone, Big Yellow and National Express last December after it was revealed he had used over £200m of shares in the companies as collateral against loans taken out by Kandahar – without notifying fellow board members.
The scandal caused the Financial Services Authority to amend and clarify its rules on director share dealings.
Ross recently bought out Morgan Stanley, which had a minority stake in Kandahar, for a nominal sum and is understood to be renegotiating some £247m of loans with Lloyds Banking Group and Royal Bank of Scotland.
The company has been hit hard by shrinking property values and is expected to breach its loan-to-value covenants next month when a formal property valuation is carried out.
Ross still holds 155m shares in Carphone Warehouse, worth around £250m.
Yesterday, Carphone shares fell 1.75 per cent to 168p, while shares in Big Yellow dropped by 7.4 per cent to 313p.