Two directors of Zenith Bank Plc and the Zenith Staff Provident Fund acquired over N841m worth of the lender’s shares in December.

According to corporate notices on insider trading filed with the Nigerian Exchange Limited, the staff fund bought about 16 million units of bank shares in multiple transactions between Monday and Wednesday.

The average price paid for the shares ranged from N36.25 to N35.36 per unit. The entire shares bought in three days were worth about N606.04m.

Earlier in the month, an Executive Director of Zenith Bank Plc, Dr Temitope Fasoranti, acquired over 1.7 million units.

Fasoranti bought the shares in different tranches on December 4 and 5.  On December 4, Fasoranti bought one million units of Zenith Bank’s shares at an average price of N34.95 per unit.

The shares were bought in four tranches of 200,000 units N34.80, 300,000 units at N34.90, 200,000 units at N35.00 and 300,000 units at N35.10.

The next day, he bought an additional 750,000 units of the shares. They were bought in three tranches of 300,000 units at N34.70, 300,000 units at N34.80 and 150,000 units at N34.90 each.

The value of the transactions was about N61.05m.

Fasoranti was appointed ED on December 29, 2017, and as of June 2023 held 13,075,000 units directly.

Another director, Henry Oroh, bought 4,849,576 units of the bank’s shares in five tranches at an average price of N35.94, bringing the entire deal to about N174.29m on Wednesday.

In one tranche, Oroh bought 200,000 units at N35.80; 1,500,194 units at N35.90 and 1,385,382 units at N35.95. In another tranche, he bought 1,363,544 units at the rate of N36 per unit and 400,456 units at N36.05 per unit.

According to the half-year report, Oroh held 9,964,127 units of Zenith Bank’s shares directly. With his latest acquisition, he has boosted his stake in the bank.