James Brown didn’t put any money down this week, but did get $320,000 worth of stock in a miner.

Yes that’s right, James Brown.

James Brown the singer died on Christmas day, 2006, but his namesake lives on as the CEO of Altura Mining (ASX:AJM).

Mr Brown received 2m shares, bringing his interest in the company to 30m shares, as part of the company’s long term incentive scheme.

It may sound like a lot, but in fact that only works out to 1.6 per cent of the 1.9 billion shares Altura has on issue.

One director who did buy big and also has a massive stake in his company is Christopher Morris, the founder of Computershare. He also sits on the board of Smart Parking (ASX:SPZ).

Smart Parking was the recipient of Mr Morris’ largesse, as he spent $444,000 on market to buy the stock.

He owns 32 per cent of the company.

AfterPay rival Zip (ASX:Z1P) was at pains to ensure shareholders that chairman Phillip Crutchfield QC — and occasional lawyer vs the banks for ASIC — isn’t on a selling spree.

A 1m share sale was, in fact, to institutional investors who wanted a piece of the rising buy-now-pay-later cake.

“He has confirmed that he does not presently intend to sell any further shares over the next 12 months,” they said.

Mr Crutchfield, while not running defence (or offence) for the ASX’s top 20, has been director of Zip since 2014 and chairman since at least the 2015 backdoor listing.

He doesn’t actually own much of the company. It has 315m shares on issue, and he owns 4.5m, or just over 1 per cent.

The other seller last week was Terry Powell at Data#3 (ASX:DTL). It wasn’t the greatest deal though, given his later activity.

Mr Powell sold off 80,000 shares at $1.61 a piece, and later bought 30,000 shares back at $1.63 each.

He chaired Data#3 from the beginning in 1984 and also had a stint as managing director between 1989 and 1996.

While we could hat-tip all of the big spenders and sellers last week (scroll down for the list), we will add just one more: Les Mizikovsky.

The colourful Queenslander is a director of Tamawood (ASX:TWD), which he’s been religiously buying since November, and Collection House (ASX:CLH), where last year he tried to spill the board.

This week he spent $733,000 on Advance Nanotek (ASX:ANO), which means he has 45.8 per cent of the company he chairs.

The large part of that was a shareholder “gift” — their words, not ours.

Last week the company issued a statement saying “ANO shareholders approve large ‘Gift’ for the chairman”.

What they approved was the ability for him to take up 603,285 shares no one else had wanted in the last capital raising.

“The share price of ANO has increased 93.8 per cent since the close of the rights issue on January 3, 2019, creating a windfall [to Mr Mizikovsky] of $609,318 (as of 21 February 2019),” Advance Nanotech managing director Geoff Acton wrote.

The tiddlers

There were about 30 on-market trades between $10,000 and $100,000 that readers of Stockhead might be interested in — resources, tech and biotechs.

Directors from Oventus Medical (ASX:OVN) and BidEnergy (ASX:BID) made several appearances last week. For BidEnergy, those notices came amongst a flurry of director resignations, notably that of James Baillieu who abruptly exited the company.

The other notable sub-$100,000 trade was by Magnis (ASX:MNS) director Dr Ulrich Helmut Bez who spent $64,590 on shares in the company, and, separately, is credited as turning Aston Martin in the luxury car brand we know today.

Code Company Director Change Date Volume $ What Total holdings controlled
SPZ Smart Parking Christopher Morris Buy March 1 3.7m 444202 On market 114.4m
AQZ Alliance Aviation Services Scott McMillan Buy Feb 22 99,509 251489 On market 3.9m
Z1P Zip Co Phillip Crutchfield Sell Feb 26 1m 1501200 On market 4.5m
MOC Mortgage Choice Stephen Jermyn Buy Feb 25-28 900,000 461010 On market 3m
PM8 Pensana Metals David Hammond Buy Feb 27 10m 180,000 Conversion of performance rights 10.5m
DTL Data#3 William Powell Sell Feb 25-26 80,000 128585 On market 2.4m
NUH Nuheara Justin Miller Buy Feb 22-25 5m 187500 Exercise options 68m
ANO Advance Nanotek Lev Mizikovsky Buy Feb 22-26 723,285 733113 Capital raising and on market 26.6m
MFD Mayfield Childcare Michelle Clark Buy Feb 21 60,000 60000 On market 3.2m
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