Current Account: Fans of Grafton Group will be interested to see the latest market share statistics from the British Builders Merchants Journal.

The league table, published in the January edition of the journal, shows the Irish company in fourth place behind the three biggest players in the British market, Wolseley, Saint Gobain and Travis Perkins.

Grafton, which has been adding branches to its British builders merchanting network at a rate of more than one a month, now holds a 5 per cent share of the £9 billion sterling (€13.6 billion) market.

This is still some way short of the market leaders, Wolseley and Saint Gobain, who each boast an 18 per cent market share, and Travis Perkins, with 15 per cent of the market.

But Grafton is by far the fastest-growing player, with estimated sales growth of 25 per cent in Britain last year. Given that 26 per cent of the sector remains in the hands of independents with turnover of £15 million or less, its bolt-on acquisition strategy still has some distance to run.

Not bad going for a company that just a few years ago would have been a nameless member of the pack.