I missed this clear signal from the Emap directors. I noticed two of them (Cathcart and Griffiths) buying up stock on the 11th of December, and missed announcements of further director activity which strongly reinforced the signal…
7th December Emap announces ‘ has terminated all discussions with parties interested in Emap Communications’. Share price falls from 825p to close at 746p on 7th December.
11th-14th December- Five out of the nine Emap Directors buy shares between 732p and 757p, increasing their existing holdings by between 1/4 and three times. Those directors are Carter, Rough, Harrison, Cathcart and Griffiths. Clearly these individuals passionately believed that the market had got it wrong, and was undervaluing EMAP.
21st December- Emap announce an offer worth 931p per share.
Why this was a clear signal:
1. many directors buying, both exec and non exec
2. directors buying significant positions, up to three times the size of their existing position
3. market fed up with lack of bid, arb/hedge funds unwinding positions, therefore opportunity to buy undervalued shares
Why I missed it? Because my system for following directors share activity wasn’t rigorous enough.
Message for you: Pay attention to directors share dealing activity
followthedirectors... a study of directors share dealings 
2 comments
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January 8, 2008 at 11:21 pm
mediawatcher
You say the directors “passionately believed that the market had got it wrong”. Is it not more likely that they were always aware that the deal was never really off the table, and that a good offer was always going to be forthcoming?
Five directors all buying over half a million pounds’ worth of shares immediately after announcing the sale was off, and less than a week before it was announced as back on is fishy, surely?
January 11, 2008 at 10:58 pm
winnie
Re mediawatchers comment below:
I don’t disagree with you mediawatcher. The directors were in possession of price sensitive information that was not disclosed to the market. They presumably knew what the offer for emap was worth, and believed that there was a significant gap between the market price at the time of their purchases and their valuation of emap.
Should they have declared to the market where negotiations had got to in value terms? I think so.
Were they aware that the bidder would come back and offer a higher price? I’d say no. But there must have been a chance, however small, of that happening.
I’d go as far to suggest that the share purchases were foolish, and a bit close to the mark, even if they weren’t illegal.