One of the directors involved in Quindell’s sale-and-repurchase agreement with a US funder has had to terminate the agreement.

The company announced to the London Stock Exchange this morning that Laurence Moorse had not met a margin call in the agreement with Equities First Holdings.

The agreement, made with two other directors including then chairman Rob Terry, was announced last month, but the company subsequently had to issue a correction about the details.

The three had agreed to transfer cash or shares to EFH if the share price fell more than 20% from the discounted value at which they were transferred. This duly happened last week as the share price more than halved to less than 50p per share.

Today’s announcement said Moorse has not met this margin call which has led to the ‘termination’ of the agreement.

It added: ‘As a result, his right to purchase 200,000 ordinary shares of 15p each transferred by him to EFH under the agreement will be terminated as of today.’

Moorse retains 1.046m shares, representing 0.24% of the total issued share capital.

The announcement caused a small drop of around 2.9% in the share price to halt this week’s partial recovery.

Shares were trading at 76p by 9am today – a fraction of the summer peak of more than 200p per share but a notable improvement on last week.

Terry, who founded the company, stood down as chairman last week, with a full-time replacement yet to be installed.

The company has claimed to be the biggest listed legal services provider in the world and announced earlier this year it was making more than £500,000 a day in turnover.