The largest shareholder in pubs group Punch Taverns has decided to cut back his stake, the company has announced.
Fund manager David Einhorn took his stake in Punch to just over 12% earlier this month, giving him a larger stake than banking group UBS. But this morning Punch announced that Einhorn, through his Greenlight group, had reduced his shareholding from 32m to 19.7m, or 7.39%. Shares in Punch are down 2.25p to 57.5p. The heavily indebted company was recently involved in a spat with an analyst at Redburn Partners who put a zero value on the shares.
Elsewhere Imperial Energy has jumped 75p to £10.95 on hopes that the £12.50 a share offer from India's ONGC will be accepted by shareholders by tomorrow's deadline.
