Irish businessman John McGuckian has spent over £935,000 (€1.18 million) buying a 4 per cent stake in engineering group Unidare. Mr McGuckian is a non-executive director of Unidare and bought the shares at £1.16 (€1.47).

Unidare disclosed yesterday that three other directors had also bought shares at £1.16 each. Chairman Jack Hayes bought 200,000 shares at a total cost of £232,000 (€294,790) to bring his stake in Unidare to 250,000 shares. Chief executive Paul Duggan bought 30,000 shares, bringing his stake to just under 46,000 shares, while Kevin Gallen bought 30,000 shares to take his stake to 32,500 shares.

Last week, it emerged that Dublin investor Pierce Casey was a recent buyer of Unidare shares and by last Monday had taken his stake to 4.55 per cent.