On the plus side, NCB and its Ulster Bank parent did get the mandate to handle the Irish end of Deutsche Telekom's euro zone-wide offering of 256 million shares.

For anyone frustrated by the sheer number of likely investors in the Telecom Eireann float and the likely scale-back of allocations, Deutsche Telekom is offering some enticing incentives to anybody willing to put up around £1,500 (€1,904) for the minimum subscription of 50 shares.

A 2 to 5 per cent discount on the institutional price has been offered to punters as well as a one for 10 bonus issue for everybody who holds their shares for 12-15 months. With no exchange rate risk, as Deutsche shares trade in euros, this may be an interesting investment for anybody prepared to look beyond Ireland's shores.

Despite the collapse of its proposed merger with Telecom Italia, Deutsche is still the biggest player in fixed line telephony, ISDN and Internet provision and number three in the European mobile phone market.

All this makes Deutsche the undoubted European number one telco in terms of revenues, customers and market capitalisation. Market capitalisation alone is over €100 billion (£79 billion) - bigger than the entire Irish market.

No doubt the people at NCB will be delighted to hear from Irish investors, especially after this week's events down on Georges Dock.