With little dealing in technology shares ever taking place in Dublin, the Irish market managed to avoid most of the carnage that dragged European markets lower yesterday. The main highlights were heavy losses by CRH on London selling, more buying of Dunloe Ewart by Liam Carroll and news that Treasury Holdings had made an approach to Green Property.
CRH has been in good shape of late but fell sharply yesterday and closed down 83 cents on €17.05. Trading was modest, however, with little more than a million shares between Dublin and London. At the close, dealers said the share had been oversold and a rebound was likely.
Merrion Stockbrokers was quickly into the market buying Dunloe Ewart for Liam Carroll snapping up 18.4 million shares at €0.50 each - increasing his stake by 5.1 per cent to about 20 per cent. The shares closed up one cent on €0.49. Green was up 14 cents on €6.40 as it emerged that Johnny Ronan's Treasury Holdings had an approach rebuffed. Treasury is understood to be considering another approach - presumably at a higher price.
Banks were mixed with AIB 20 cents firmer on €11.82 while Bank of Ireland lost 19 cents to €8.00. Biggest volume in the financials, was in Irish Life & Permanent which lost 25 cents to €11.75 with 4.1 million shares trading.
Eircom lost five cents to €2.82 as news of the possible Eircell disposal was awaited. Fyffes continued its tentative recovery and gained four cents to €0.96 in volume of 3.3 million shares while Smurfit was three cents lower on €1.98.
