McCann share purchase shows faith in Fyffes

The McCann family has spent almost £950,000 buying Fyffes shares in the market, in a move seen as showing the family's confidence in the future of the fruit distribution group. All of the 750,000 shares were bought on Monday and Tuesday after the publication of the group's unexpectedly good full-year results and were purchased at prices between 119p and 131p.

As directors, the McCann family - through Balkan Investments - are restricted in the periods when they can buy and sell shares, and could not have bought shares ahead of the results. As a result, they had to pay the market price for the shares - a market price well ahead of the price of the shares before the results were announced.

Still, with Fyffes shares closing yesterday on 134p, the family is already sitting on a modest paper profit.

This is the second time in the space of three months that the McCanns have bought sizeable amounts of Fyffes shares in the market. Last October, through Balkan Investments, the chairman, Mr Neil McCann, deputy chairman, Mr Carl McCann and chief executive, Mr David McCann bought 635,000 shares at a total cost of £640,000.

This means that the family has spent more than £1.5 million on Fyffes shares in the past three months, and brings their stake via Balkan Investments to 9 per cent.

This makes Balkan the second biggest shareholder in Fyffes, after DCC which has a 10.7 per cent stake in the fruit distribution group. Until late 1992, the McCanns' investment company was the biggest shareholder at 13 per cent, but it was forced to sell £10 million worth of shares because of penal interest rates at the peak of the currency crisis which led to the devaluation of the pound.

Most of those shares were sold to DCC which, as a result, increased its stake from 8.3 per cent to 11 per cent, while the McCann stake fell from 13 per cent to 9 per cent.

Share issues to the owners of companies bought since then have diluted the Balkan and DCC stakes slightly.

As well as the 26.5 million shares held jointly through Balkan Investments, members of the McCann family also hold shares in their own names. Mr Neil McCann has 712,500 shares, Mr David McCann 791,667 shares and Mr Carl McCann 395,833 shares.