Rothwell offloads ICG shares to tune of €23m

EAMONN ROTHWELL, the chief executive of Irish Continental Group (ICG), has sold almost half of his stake in the listed ferry company for more than €23 million.

Mr Rothwell sold 1.75 million shares in the company at a price of €13.25, to an undisclosed buyer, according to a statement released to the stock market late yesterday.

The sale, which took place on Thursday, means his stake has been reduced from just more than 15 per cent to 8.9 per cent. He now owns 2.2 million shares in the business.

Mr Rothwell has made a couple of attempts, without success, to buy the ferry company in the past 2½ years.

This involved him buying a large number of shares at a price of more than €20 apiece.

As a result, Mr Rothwell will have booked a loss on this share sale.

Sources close to the company suggested that Mr Rothwell’s decision to sell the shares was designed to crystalise a loss on the stock as part of a tax planning measure in advance of the end of this tax year.

This would allow him to offset any capital gain that he might have had this year against his losses on the ICG transaction.

It was suggested that the ICG chief would buy the shares back in the near future but this could not be confirmed yesterday.

Mr Rothwell could not be reached for comment.

Last month, the 29.3 per cent stake in ICG held by property developer Liam Carroll was sold into the market by Goodbody Stockbrokers at €12.20 a share.

This resulted in AIB taking a hit of about €88 million on the loan advanced to Mr Carroll’s South Morston Investments to buy the ICG stock two years ago.

South Morston was one of a number of Mr Carroll’s companies placed into liquidation following court proceedings taken recently by Dutch-owned ACCBank.

While its revenues and profits have declined this year, ICG is a highly cash-generative company that is expected to have no net debt by 2011. It also offers one of the best dividend yields in the Irish market at 7.5 per cent.

The company has been the subject of offers from Mr Rothwell and the Philip Lynch-led Moonduster consortium, which comprises One Fifty One and the Cork-based Doyle Shipping Group.

A proposed joint bid by Mr Rothwell and Moonduster, which controls 25 per cent, collapsed in April due to difficulties in securing funding. They were precluded from making another bid for 12 months.