Among those taking the plunge are John Bowmer and Tony Reeves, the non-executive co-chairmen at Kellan Group, who each purchased 375,000 shares at a price of 4.375p on 17 April. The shares have since jumped to 10p.

Jon Plassard, chief financial officer at Networkers International, was one of a number of the company’s directors who purchased shares at 8.5p on 9 April. Plassard told Recruiter: “I think that for us, the bottom of the market has probably been reached from a share price perspective. “The directors all expressed a desire to buy them at the current level if they became available,” he adds.

Plassard says the purpose is to make money based on capital growth. However, he emphasises that the directors are not interested in a short-term killing. “We are in this for the long run. It’s a long-term investment.”

Plassard accepts that many investors see directors’ share dealing as a vote of confidence in a company. “The directors of any business are ideally placed to see the value in the business,” he adds.

But how do well do they actually perform?
Simon Winfield, who runs followthedirectors.co.uk, a website dedicated to the subject, has carried out an analysis of 357 transactions by company directors over the past 15 months. Winfield told Recruiter that whereas “executive directors have performed pretty much in line with the market (-1.5% relative to the market), non-executive directors have outperformed the market by 6.7%”. Though why this should be is anybody’s guess.