YOU carried an article praising the top management of HBOS bank for buying shares in the bank, thereby showing their confidence in its trading position (Yorkshire Post, March 23).

This followed a sudden fall in the share price due to what were believed to be intentionally malicious rumours which in turn were being investigated by the police. I would like to suggest an alternative reason for such largesse by the bank's management.

Is it possible that having seen a sudden fall in the share price and believing that it would soon rise again, they recognised the opportunity to make a large and very fast profit?

Your article stated that the chief executive purchased 92,812 shares at the bottom price of 446.25p per share (using over £400,000 of his annual bonus).

By close of trading, the share price had already risen to 473.25p – a profit of more than £25,000.

When trading began on Tuesday morning, the shares immediately rose to 554p giving an overall profit of more than £100,000 (or 24 per cent) – not a bad little earner over the Easter weekend.

It is bad enough that these fat cats, (who are, in the main, responsible for the current appalling state of the financial sector), get such huge bonuses on top of their enormous salaries, while investors lose hand over fist.

The fact that they dip their snouts even further into the trough in this manner is a public disgrace.

I wonder what nurses, teachers and even the bank's own counter staff invested their annual bonuses in? As if!