RE: Rankine Shares15 May 2014 12:35
I was stood chatting with Rankine - perhaps more listening whilst MarbellaMike asked questions far more competently thank I could (!) - and we hit the topic of Rankine's shareholding. In fairness, he wasn't at all bothered to be asked and responded with seeming clarity and honesty.
The explanation he gave is that of the two majority shareholders, one is in favour of tie-ins through share options and the other, larger majority shareholder isn't. For the reason of the latter, share options are not offered by the company to any members of staff from the board down. Rather, there are bonus incentives based on future sale of the business to Total, Taqa or whoever.
Granted, that doesn't answer why Rankine hasn't chosen to put his own money into the business, but like I said, it didn't seem rehearsed and was far more straight an answer to this kind of question than I've received from some other AIM company directors.