Big Yellow founders Nick Vetch and Peter Burks have taken advantage of their company’s soaring share-price by cashing in a total 1.3m shares.

Vetch has sold just over 1m shares at 640p each in the REIT-elect, netting around £6.45m; while Burks has reaped £2.12m from the sale of 332,000 shares.

The sales take Vetch’s remaining holdings to 9.15%, comfortably below the 10% shareholding maximum as stipulated in UK REIT legislation. Burks still owns around 9m Big Yellow shares, representing almost 8% of the company’s issued share capital.

The self-storage specialist, which topped Property Week’s Shareprice Performance League in 2006, has enjoyed robust share price growth in the last 12 months following the rapid expansion of self-storage as an alternative property class. Big Yellow recorded a 127% increase in its share price last year.