New Morrisons boss raises shareholding with 0.5 mln stg purchase

LONDON, Sept 18 (Reuters) - David Potts, the new boss of Britain's fourth-largest supermarket, Morrisons has spent 500,000 pounds ($778,950) buying more stock in the company, whose share price has slumped by almost a quarter since he joined in March.

Morrisons said on Friday that Potts purchased 314,881 shares at 158.79 pence each on Thursday, taking his holding to 822,881 shares, worth about 1.3 million pounds.

Last week the Bradford, northern England, based firm reported a plunge in first-half profit of more than a third to its lowest level in nine years, showing the scale of the task facing Potts to revive the company's fortunes in a brutally competitive market.

Potts warned: "It (Other OTC: ITGL - news) will be a long journey."

Last week Morrisons' Chief Financial Officer Trevor Strain spent just under 100,000 pounds on 58,453 shares, taking his holding to 97,794 shares.

Shares (Berlin: DI6.BE - news) in Morrisons were down 0.4 percent at 157.8p at 0755 GMT, valuing the business at 3.7 billion pounds.

($1 = 0.6419 pounds) (Reporting by James Davey; Editing by Neil Maidment)