Yell's top duo pick up £15.5m

YELL'S top two executives today bagged more than £15.5m between them after selling about half of their shareholdings in the telephone directories group.

Chief executive John Condron adds £10.88m to the £5.5m he pocketed a year ago when the Yellow Pages publisher floated in one of the most successful listings of 2003.

Finance director John Davis collects £4.93m, adding to the £2.2m he made in last year's float.

The share sales will raise eyebrows in the City, coming barely three weeks after Davis told reporters that neither he nor Condron had any 'imminent plans' to sell down their holdings.

The sales are bound to trigger speculation about the directors' futures with the business, despite Davis reportedly confirming in late July that 'he was totally committed to the company'.

The directors sold their holdings at 340p a share. The shares slipped 7 1/2p to 336 3/4p on news of the sales but are still trading comfortably above last year's issue price of 285p.

Condron will still hold more than 3.34m shares worth some £11m, or 0.48% of the former BT company, while Davis's remaining 0.21% stake is worth almost £4.9m.

The Yell float has sparked a raft of six-figure windfalls in the City over the past 12 months with its venture capitalist investors Apax and Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst more than doubling their initial £650m investment over the past three years.