Dublin closed marginally up yesterday on the back of gains by Elan, which reports its third-quarter results tomorrow. The drugs company, which accounts for 20 per cent of the ISEQ index, closed up €1 at €62.20, helping the index into positive territory. The ISEQ closed at 5,686, up 15 points, or 0.27 per cent, on the day.

Eircom was unchanged at €2.80 as the market awaited the outcome of talks with Vodafone about the sale of Eircell.

Green was up 10 cents, hitting a high for the year of €7.25, after Treasury Holdings announced it wanted to bid for the company with the backing of Deutsche Bank Real Estate Private Equity Group. Any new offer might have to be as high as €9 to ensure success, given the substantial discount to net assets at which Green has been trading.

Fidelity Investments is already sitting on a tidy profit after buying another 1 per cent of Green in recent days. The property group informed the market yesterday that Fidelity had upped its stake to 6.52 per cent. Fidelity has not done as well with IFG, in which it upped its stake to 11.02 per cent. IFG was down 13 cents at €1.54. Dunloe Ewart, which is also in play, was unchanged on 50 cents . Marlborough, another merger candidate, was down five cents at €1.85.

Financial stocks gave up some of the gains posted on Monday. AIB was down 16 cents at €12.03 and Bank of Ireland fell 15 cents to €8.15. Kerry Group was down 10 cents to €14.60 after it announced that it was paying $35 million for Armour Food Ingredients, the US group. CRH was unchanged at €17.05 and Glanbia shed one cent to close at €0.45.

Overall, the number of winners outnumbered losers by 23 to 20, with 10 stocks unchanged.