By: 13 November 2014
Further woe for Quindell as biggest institutional investor halves interest in the company

Quindell’s biggest institutional investor has almost halved its interest in the claims outsourcing company after a controversial director share-selling revelation.

The Daily Telegraph has reported that Fidelity has sold 19.8m shares, dropping its stake in the company to 4.9%, worth 21.4m shares. The news comes only a few months after the asset management firm had been one of Quindell’s biggest and most vocal supporters in the wake of a short-selling attack by Gotham City Research.

The sell-off came a day after Quindell revealed that its founder Rob Terry, and two other directors – finance director Laurence Moorse and non-executive director Steve Scott – had taken out a loan, secured against their pre-existing Quindell stakes, to buy shares. It admitted that the trio had sold shares to US group Equities First Holdings in order to do the deal and that they had promised to buy back the shares they had sold in two years’ time.

The Fidelity sale led to Quindell’s share value falling by 13.5% to 72p.