Some bullish comments from London, the latest from Lehman Brothers, helped AIB push ahead strongly from its recent low. After peaking at €8.55, the shares closed up 35 cents on €8.35.

While Lehman has AIB on its recommended list, ABN Amro is less enthusiastic and believes the stock will do little more than move sideways in the coming months. While AIB moved stronger, Bank of Ireland continued to plummet. It fell to a low of €5.97, before finding some support to close on €6.00, a fall of 15 1/2 cents.

Smurfit and CRH were both involved in big acquisitions but neither seemed to impress the market, although Dublin analysts felt that both acquisitions were good moves. Smurfit was 10 cents lower on €2.40, while on Nasdaq Smurfit-Stone was over $2 1/4 (€2.26) lower in midday trading at a 12-month low of $12 7/8 even though analysts said the $1.4 billion St Laurent acquisition would boost earnings.

CRH's $362 million acquisition of the Shelly Company was equally well received by analysts, but just as Smurfit fell on its news so did CRH, which fell 53 cents to €17.42. Cyclical stocks like Smurfit and CRH seem to be going through one of their periodic bear phases, with the market still dominated by dot com fever.

Eircom, however, was in solid demand and dealt up nine cents to €4.70. Horizon took full advantage of that dot com fever to tap the market for €29 million in a 5 per cent placing. The 2.9 million shares were placed at €10.10 and even that dilution failed to stem interest in the stock which closed at €11.25, up 65 cents. Iona was marginally firmer in midday Nasdaq trading on $63 1/2 after its $13.2 million acquisition.