Marine Harvest filed a public notice announcing that chairman Ole-Eirik Lerøy and CEO Alf-Helge Aarskog had both sold hundreds of thousands of shares in the company worth millions of krone.
The notice, filed on 11 May, noted that Framar AS sold 1 million shares of Marine Harvest and Profond AS sold 122,000 shares, at a price of NOK 129.90 per share. (USD 15.92, EUR 14.06). Both companies are owned by Lerøy, meaning he banked more than NOK 145.7 million (USD 17.9 million, EUR 15.8 million) as a result of the sale. Lerøy and his affiliates still hold 2,100,000 shares in Marine Harvest, or 0.47 percent of the company’s issued share capital, according to the announcement.
Also on 11 May, the company announced Aarskog sold 100,000 shares in Marine Harvest at a price of NOK 131.11 (USD 16.06, EUR 14.19) per share, with a total value of NOK 13.1 million (USD 1.6 million, EUR 1.4 million). Aarskog still holds 38,580 shares of the company’s stock, with an additional 1,639,961 option allotments from 2013, 2014 and 2015.
The Norwegian seafood company is the world’s largest producer of Atlantic salmon and employees 11,700 workers, according to its website. Its stock is listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange and the New York Stock Exchange. It awards its top executives options in the company’s stock as part of its scheme to reward performance.
In March, Aarskog exercised 105,500 options, earning NOK 10.65 million (USD 1.26 million, EUR 1.13 million), and other Marine Harvest executives cashed out an additional 400,000 shares, taking advantage of the stock’s highest value in years.
