Directors' dealings UK — what they are, where to find them
The UK regime for director share-dealings: UK MAR, the FCA, the NSM, and RNS DSH. Plain English, 5-min read.
Directors' dealings — sometimes written director dealings — are the trades that a UK-listed company's directors, C-suite executives and other senior managers make in their own company's shares. In statute they're called PDMR transactions, where PDMR stands for *Person Discharging Managerial Responsibilities*. The disclosure regime extends beyond the directors themselves to their spouses, dependent children, and any companies or trusts they control.
The law: UK MAR. When the UK left the EU on 31 January 2020, the Market Abuse Regulation (EU 596/2014) was *onshored* into UK law via the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. The result, UK MAR, is enforced by the Financial Conduct Authority and substantively mirrors the EU regime — same three-business-day filing deadline, same definition of PDMR, same closely-associated-persons extension. See our deep dive on MAR Article 19 for the full EU origin.
Where filings live. UK directors' dealings surface in two places. The authoritative record is the FCA National Storage Mechanism (NSM), which stores every regulatory disclosure for UK-listed issuers. In parallel, companies are required to release the same notification through the London Stock Exchange's Regulatory News Service (RNS) under category code DSH (Director / PDMR Shareholding). RNS is what most market terminals and news feeds pick up; NSM is what regulators rely on for enforcement.
What a UK filing contains. Every DSH announcement follows the FCA's standard PDMR notification template. Mandatory fields: the PDMR's name and reason for responsibility (e.g., "Chief Executive Officer"), the issuer's name and LEI, a description of the financial instrument (ordinary shares, ISIN), the nature of the transaction (acquisition, disposal, exercise of options), the price and volume, the aggregate value, the date and venue of the transaction, and whether the trade was the PDMR's own or a closely-associated person's.
The £20,000 floor. UK MAR carries the same €5,000 *de minimis* aggregate-per-calendar-year floor as EU MAR. The FCA exercised the option in Article 19(9) to raise the threshold to €20,000 (roughly £17,000), so transactions below that aggregate level in a calendar year don't have to be reported until they cross the line.
Worked example. On a typical day on the LSE you might see an RNS announcement headed *"Shell plc — Director/PDMR Shareholding"*. Body: the CFO acquired 1,500 ordinary shares at £27.40 average price, aggregate £41,100, on XLON, on the date stated. That single notification satisfies both the issuer's RNS obligation and the FCA NSM filing — the same XML payload feeds both.
Who's a PDMR in practice. Not just the executive board. The FCA's interpretation covers (1) members of the administrative, management or supervisory body of the issuer; and (2) senior executives who have regular access to inside information *and* power to take managerial decisions affecting the future development and business prospects of the issuer. For most UK-listed companies that's the executive directors, the non-executive directors, the company secretary if they sit on the executive committee, and a handful of divisional heads.
Closely associated persons. The disclosure net catches more than the PDMR personally — see our guide on PDMR vs. closely associated person. Spouses, civil partners, dependent children, relatives in the same household for 12+ months, and any legal entity the PDMR controls are all in scope.
Why investors track them. Decades of academic research (Lakonishok & Lee 2001; Cohen, Malloy & Pomorski 2012) show insider purchases predict abnormal returns of 4–11% per year over the following 12 months in the US market. UK studies are more sparse but broadly consistent. Sales are a much weaker signal because of tax, diversification and option-vesting motivations. For more, see how insider buys predict returns.
Tracking them at scale. The NSM portal isn't designed for systematic monitoring — it's a search-and-download archive, no API, Cloudflare-protected. If you want to follow UK directors' dealings as a stream rather than dig file-by-file, you need an aggregator. See our practical guide: how to track director dealings in the UK. For the full European picture (UK plus every EU national regulator) head to the InsideREU director dealings hub.