In a reasonably active day on the Irish Stock Exchange, which saw a lot of interest in financials, Bank of Ireland ended the day up eight cents at €10.60 with more than one million shares traded.

AIB was 19 cents weaker at €12.84, while Anglo Irish Bank was five cents stronger at €3.48, with more than one million shares changing hands. Irish Life & Permanent advanced six cents to €12.65.

Smurfit closed the day two cents up at €1.98 following strong trading in its shares. US investment group Franklin Resources has emerged as a recent heavy buyer of Smurfit shares and has just disclosed a 3.1 per cent stake. Market sources believe that Franklin - a value investor - has bought more than 15 million Smurfit shares since the start of the year to take its stake above the 3 per cent disclosure limit.

Also firmer on the day were CRH, advancing five cents to €20, and Ryanair, which closed at €11.50, up 10 cents on the day. United Drug jumped 40 cents to €11.40 on reasonably light volumes. Elan picked up 25 cents to finish at €58.75 despite carrying a $344 million charge on otherwise good results.

Eircom also eased ahead slightly on the back of Vodafone trading up, closing eight cents stronger at €2.64.

As the Irish stock market closed, Irish tech stocks were having a mixed day on the Nasdaq. Iona was nearly 2 per cent stronger at $61.43-3/4, while SmartForce was trading 2.85 per cent up at $45.06-1/4. Riverdeep was unchanged at $25, while Trintech had dropped more than 1 per cent to $8.81-1/4. Baltimore was nearly 4 per cent weaker at $121.06-1/4 .