Maybe they’re reluctant to return from holiday after a rough end to 2018, but directors still haven’t really returned to trading yet this year.

There was the usual smattering of small trades including a couple by mining identity Michael Ruane who is now collecting stock in Empire Resources (ASX:ERL), in addition to his usual forays in Reward Minerals (ASX:RWD).

Mr Ruane served Empire with a “249D” notice to give shareholders the opportunity to vote out the four-director board, and they did in November.

Colourful Queenslander Lev Mizikovsky had about $1m to spend and boy, was he spending.

Three days after house builder Tamawood (ASX:TWD) blamed a “perfect storm” for another profit downgrade, the founder bought a large chunk of stock.

Mr Mizikovsky used the 6 per cent share price dumping to pick up $307,920 worth of stock for the rock bottom price of $3.57. He now has a 49 per cent stake.

It’s the sixth time he’s bought in since the end of November and was the only major mover on market trade last week.

If Tamawood was a bottom of the market buy, Advance Nanotek (ASX:ANO) would have been near the top — if he’d bought on market.

Mr Mizikovsky underwrote a capital raising and got the stock for 87c.

Last week Advance Nanotek said it had doubled half year profit to $1.25m, only to issue a correction and say actually it was $1.6m, sending the stock to record highs.

If he’d been able to sell those shares last week, Mr Mizikovsky would have made a cool $233, 484 profit.

The biggest numbers last week came out of Ikwezi Mining’s (ASX:IKW) capital raising.

A company associated with director Tushar Agrawal underwrote a recent capital raising, while another in which managing director David Pile also has a minor shareholding participated.

Only 34 per cent of the $6m cap raise was taken up so underwriter Finevest Investments, a UAE-registered company, took up the rest.

Along with shareholdings in three other associated companies, that means Mr Agrawal effectively has an interest in Ikwezi of 70.5 per cent

Mr Pile owns a stake in one of those three companies and it took up half of the cap raise, spending $1m.

Explaurum (ASX:EXU) directors vested their performance rights last week and while it didn’t cost them a dime, it was worth a pretty penny to each.

Each director was rewarded with $140,000 and upwards for their efforts in getting the company to where it is today — namely succumbing to a hostile takeover over by Ramelius Resources (ASX:RMS).

Code Company Director Change Date Volume $ What Total holdings controlled
IKW Ikwezi Mining Tushar Agrawal Buy Jan 3 3bn 6013680 Capital raising 3.8bn
IKW Ikwezi Mining David Pile Buy Jan 3 559m 1009021 Capital raising 935m
PUR Pursuit Minerals Peter Wall Buy Jan 8 4m 149999 Capital raising 4m
EXU Explaurum Jeffrey Lawton Buy Jan 9 2.4m 352800 Vest performance rights 16m
EXU Explaurum Stephen Stroud Buy Jan 9 1.3m 189000 Vest performance rights 1.8m
EXU Explaurum Christopher Baker Buy Jan 9 948,000 142200 Vest performance rights 2.4m
SO4 Salt Lake Potash Tony Swiericzuk Buy Jan 9 952,381 $400,000 Capital raising 952,381
TWD Tamawood Lev Mizikovsky Buy Jan 10 86,138 307920 On market 12.5m
ANO Advance Nanotek Lev Mizikovsky Buy Jan 9 834,590 726093 Capital raising 25.9m
EUR European Lithium Malcolm Day Buy Jan 3 20m 200000 Converting options 14.5m
LHM Land & Homes Group Choon Keng Kho Buy Jan 4 1.5m 300000 Bought convertible notes 503m
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