DCC chief executive, Mr Jim Flavin, has made a paper profit of £580,528 after spending just over £362,500 to increase his stake in the company to 2.63 per cent.

Mr Flavin said yesterday he had no plans to sell any of his shares.

He exercised options to buy 200,000 DCC shares at 100p each. In addition, he paid 99.8p per share for 162,830 shares which were allocated to him when the company was floated on the stock exchange.

At that time he made a downpayment of 0.2p per share for these shares and undertook to complete the purchase at a total price of 100p per share.

In total he paid £362,830 to buy the shares which at yesterday's closing price of 260p had a market value of £943,358.

Mr Flavin's total holding of DCC shares has risen to 2 145 330 shares. At yesterday's closing price hiss holding was worth £5,577,858.

In February he exercised options to acquire 150,000 DCC shares at 75.8p per share, paying £113,700 for the block.

Earlier this month DCC reported a 14 per cent rise in pretax profits to £28.9 million for the year to end March. Turnover rose by 24 per cent to £348 million.

Announcing the results, Mr Flavin said the company planned to progressively buy out the minority shareholdings in most of its subsidiary companies.

In the short term DCC plans to raise its stake in the Robert Roberts and the Kelkin food distribution operations from 80 per cent to 100 per cent and to increase its stake in Sharptext and Micro Peripherals from 87 to 89 per cent.

In recent weeks DCC paid £3.9 million for the 12.3 per cent stake in Printech held by Scottish Provident.