Sir Julian Horn-Smith, non-executive director at accountancy software group Sage, has spent £225,000 on buying 100,000 shares in the company at 225p per share.

Horn-Smith made the investment despite the company’s share price recently hitting a near eight-month low, following sluggish results.

In its most recent full year results Sage unveiled a slowdown in organic growth, to 5% from 6% previously.

This disappointed the market despite Sage easily beating expectations with pre-tax profits up 19% on last year at £113.7m.