£1.6m for boss who works for free

MARK DIXON, the Regus chief executive who has waived his £ 400,000 annual salary to help the property company through its troubles, has made a paper profit of more than £1.6m from shares he bought in the group in the past four months.

Dixon showed his support for Regus when the City was debating whether the serviced office provider would go bust, buying just over eight million shares at prices ranging from 12.8p to 39 1/2p since the end of July. The stock was trading at 47 1/2p on Tuesday.

He made his biggest leap of faith in early October, when he bought two million shares at 12.8p, just off the all-time low of 11 1/2p. He bought a further million shares at 18p three days later and a similar number at 30p on 11 November. The last purchase came just hours after Regus revealed that Dixon and finance director Stephen Stamp are working for free in a bid to stem the bleeding that caused it to lose £96.7m in three months.

Dixon's forays into the market have left him holding 62.6% of the company. He did not sell any stock during or after the float and says he has no intention of taking the group private.

Regus has said it expects to be cash flow neutral in the current quarter and will start generating cash next year. It said last month that its average occupancy rate was running at 60%, but was only 46% in America.