Dublin report:Falls in the price of leading stocks dragged down the overall market just over 41 points and left Dublin trailing leading European bourses such as London and Frankfurt, writes Barry O'Halloran
Ongoing investor wariness of building materials group CRH, following bad news from one of its American peers and reports that US highway spending may be facing federal budgetary cuts, persisted for a second day, and left the market's biggest company 77.5 cent shy of its opening quote at €24.02.
The fall topped 3 per cent, but volumes were light enough, with investors selling just over four million shares in the company.
The day's second high-profile loser was Bank of Ireland, which shed 21 cent to close at €9.59, a dip of 2.14 per cent. Dealers said there were a lot of sellers in the market, with 6.9 million shares traded.
Its performance contrasted with that of the Irish market's other financial stocks, all of which did well yesterday. AIB gained 20 cent to close at €14.70, with 2.3 million units changing hands.
Anglo Irish also attracted plenty of buyers, adding 20 cent to close at €9.85 on volumes of over 5.25 million shares. Irish Life and Permanent gained 30 cent or 2.89 per cent, to close at €10.70.
Building materials and insulation specialist Kingspan had a bad day, dropping 32 cent to close at €8.80, a fall of 3.51 per cent, with almost 2.5 million shares changing hands.
Readymix, subject of a profit warning two days ago, dropped 3.5 cent to close at €1.365.
Low-cost airline Ryanair ended the day level at €3.525, but there was a lot of activity in the stock during the day. At one point it was up over 3 per cent, before dropping back to its opening price in late trading.
