Pizza king Don Meij has dumped another load of his Domino’s shares to pay the tax man

PIZZA king Don Meij has dumped another load of Domino’s shares to pay the tax man while travel bosses Graham “Skroo” Turner and Jamie Pherous made killings on Thursday.

Don Meij, CEO of Domino's Pizza.

PIZZA king Don Meij has dumped another load of Domino’s shares to pay the tax man.

The Domino’s managing director sold 433,463 shares for $18.6 million between February 15 and February 22 in a price range between $41.88 and $43.80 per share.

Meij told the ASX yesterday that the majority of the proceeds from the sale will be used to pay tax arising from the acquisition of shares under the company’s share option plan.

You might recall Meij wrapped up a massive share sell-down in the pizza giant last year, pocketing $17.5 million as part of an effort to settle tax and divorce obligations.

Meij still holds more than 1.8 million shares in the company valued at more than $74.7 million at yesterday’s closing price of $40.56.

Meanwhile, Flight Centre’s Graham “Skroo” Turner and Corporate Travel Management (CTM) boss Jamie Pherous made significant paper profits in the last couple of days after their stakes in their respective companies soared on healthy profit results.

Turner’s 15 per cent stake in Flight Centre soared by $79 million to $842 million after the company’s shares climbed more than 10 per cent to $55.26.

Pherous’ 20 per cent stake in CTM jumped by $81 million to about $544 million after the shares rose 17 per cent over two days to $25.13. Pherous sold a big chunk of his stock last year but this week said he would not offload any more stock and he had just “enough skin in the game.”

NEW DIGS

BLUE CHIP property agency JLL has moved into swish new offices on the top two floors of Central Plaza in Queen St. Attending a shindig earlier this week to celebrate the opening was JLL chief executive Stephen Conry, Lord Mayor Graham Quirk, James Power from the Power Group, Cornerstone Properties’ Liz Pidgeon and Herbert Smith Freehills partner Kerry Heilbronn. JLL has had a long association with 345 Queen St since first moving there in 1989 when the building opened. It has managed the building since its completion. This move involved shifting up from the 37th and 38th floor to level 39 and 40.

RINGS A BELL

A HUGE bell on a desk at Metro Mining’s Brisbane’s office rang out when the company’s shares broke through the 30¢ “barrier” for the first time earlier this week.

Metro is on track to commence bauxite mining operations at the Bauxite Hills Mine north of Weipa in April. Construction of the mine was completed in December prior to the onset of the wet season.

Bauxite is now one of the three leading commodities traded on the export market – following iron ore and coal. Metro staff, many of whom are stockholders, celebrated with coffee and cake! The shares closed at 30.5¢ yesterday.

SLUMMING IT

WAS the private jet in the mechanic’s shop? Fashion designer Keri Craig was spotted with her daughter and mum in Qantas business class on a flight from Brisbane to New York last September. “I had a chat to them in the Brisbane lounge as we waited about eight hours for the 747 to be fixed,” our spy tells us. According to her recently released book Keri Craig: The Label, The Lady, The Lifestyle, Craig and beef baron husband Trevor Lee usually travel in their own aircraft because as Keri puts it allows the couple to “find freedom from the tedium of convention.” Business class must be a bit of a come down after that.

UP AND AWAY

MAYBE Craig needs to borrow Alliance Airline’s opulent new VIP aircraft that was launched this week at Brisbane Airport. Spotted looking through the jet that features a spacious lounge was aviation entrepreneur Dick Smith and fashion queen Deborah Hutton. The plane was unwrapped at the same time as Alliance rolled out its latest Fokker 100.