RE: 120p15 Mar 2021 17:19
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Metro Bank chair is sharp cookie
Another chairman spending big on company shares last week was new Metro Bank (LSE:MTRO) head Robert Sharpe.
His £20,000 purchase was made at 123.6p, which is more than double Metro's heavily shorted price in November when Sharpe bought his first shares in the challenger bank to mark his appointment as chairman.
The shares had been almost 150p in February, but suffered a 7% results day reversal when Metro posted an annual loss of £311.4 million and said its all-important net interest margin had deteriorated to 1.22% from 1.51% a year earlier.
While the pandemic was a big factor in the performance, chief executive Daniel Frumkin said the company's turnaround strategy focusing on higher yielding assets was on track.
This has seen it move into specialist mortgages, while Metro has also entered the unsecured lending market through the purchase of the RateSetter peer-to-peer platform. In addition, a £3.1 billion disposal of residential mortgage assets has bolstered the balance sheet.
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Frumkin staked £1 million of his own money on Metro's recovery in November, having taken the helm at the start of last year. Shares were more than 4,000p in March 2018 but were sent into a tailspin by an accounting error and then the impact of Covid-19 on industry sentiment.
The bank, which marked its 10th anniversary in 2020, had 2.2 million customer accounts and deposits of £16 billion at the end of last year.
During his 45-year career in retail banking, Sharpe led the transformation of West Bromwich Building Society, having also been CEO at the Portman Building Society and boss of Bank of Ireland's consumer business in the UK.
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