Jim Armitage: Tesco boss Dave Lewis has a good reason for not buying the supermarket's shares

Tesco boss Dave Lewis has finally explained why he’s not been buying many shares in the company.

Retail punters in particular like to see that directors have enough faith in their professed brilliance to put their own money where their mouth is. Hence, Morrisons’ David Potts bought £500,000 worth of Morrisons’ stock last month.

Lewis tells Retail Week he and his fellow board members have agreed to ban themselves from buying because of the large amount of inside information they have on the company at any one time.

Plenty of us want to buy, he says, but we’ve stopped ourselves from doing so.

In most other companies, you’d have to see this as a rather pompous excuse. Too goody-two-shoes by far.

But given that Tesco is reportedly in secret negotiations with the Serious Fraud Office to settle its criminal probe into its accounting scandal, which could either lead to a share price-crushing fine or a light, deferred-prosecution slap on the wrist, you can sort of see his point.