Lord Sainsbury of Turville, the former science minister and part of the supermarket chain's founding family, has reduced his shareholding in the business.
According to a regulatory filing, his stake has been cut from 7.75% to 6.3% following the disposal of 20 million shares at 424.9p each. This compares with the 600p on offer from the Qatar-backed Delta Two consortium before that proposal was pulled at the beginning of last week.
But that doesn't mean Lord Sainsbury is bailing out of the company after the bid's failure. Today's sale was put in place many months ago, when his lordship was still in the government and his shareholding was looked after by a blind trust. The arrangement, put in place by the trust using derivatives contracts, ran out today. The shares have ended up with a number of different investors.
Lord Sainsbury - a former science minister - resigned from the government a year ago and, on his departure, he indicated he wanted to give up to £1bn away through his charitable foundation. Today's sale will go a little way towards achieving that.
News of the share sale did little damage to Sainsbury's shares, which climbed 9.5p to 414.75p.
