ROMAN ABRAMOVICH, the billionaire owner of Chelsea football club, has strengthened his grip on Russia-focused miner Highland Gold with the acquisition of 1.5m shares from its former managing director Ivan Koulakov.

Koulakov sold the shares at 167p to persons connected to Millhouse LLC, Abramovich’s investment vehicle, netting some £2.5m. The sale reduces Koulakov’s stake in Highland to 18.87m shares or 5.8%. Millhouse paid $400m (£200m) for a 40% stake in Aim-listed Highland last year. It owns a string of projects in Russia, including the Mayskoye deposit in Chukotka, the north east region of Russia where Abramovich used to be governor.

Highland Gold recently announced it is proceeding with the development of the Mayskoye project after conducting a feasibility study. At full production levels Mayskoye is expected to produce between 250,000 and 275,000 oz of gold per year, over a mine life of greater than 12 years from 2010.

The company posted a profit in 2007 of $18.1m against a $94.9m loss the year before. Profit from continuing operations was $12.2m. Turnover jumped to $112.1m from $92m, reflecting the company’s ‘no-hedge’ policy which allowed it to benefit from stronger gold prices. TWO independent nonexecutive directors of struggling sofa retailer Land of Leather have shown faith in the chain’s revival prospects just a couple of weeks after the company’s emergency fund raising.

Gillian Wilmot, former managing director of Royal Mail, bought 50,000 shares at 43p. Her purchase follows a £35,000 investment the week before by senior independent director Richard Kirk, chief executive of clothing store the Peacock Group.

Kirk bought 92,540 shares at 38p, to take his stake to 144,259 shares, 0.41% of the issued share capital of the company. Kirk was one of several directors who supported the company’s cash call earlier this month, buying 34,294 shares at 50p.

The company raised £13.5m through the underwritten issue and said that without the funds it probably would not have been able to continue to trade. Like-for-like sales orders are down 34.5% year-on-year in the period April to June.

The board expects pretax profit for the year to August 3 will be at least £200,000; at the interim stage the company posted a pretax profit of £5.5m so it is clearly losing money at current trading levels.

Directors have in-depth knowledge of their businesses, so it can pay to track their moves. Every week Digitallook.com reveals the bosses who have bought or sold big stakes.

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