The chief financial officer of Johnston Press has bought a further 550,000 shares in the newspaper publisher.

The company said David King had paid 3.851p for each share, taking his overall stake in the business to 13.1m shares currently worth just over £500,000.

Shares in Johnston Press have fallen in value from 17p to around 3.9p in recent weeks following the issue of new shares as part of a £360m refinancing plan.

However most of this fall in value had been anticipated with the refinancing plan envisaging the shares would trade at around 4.8p.