Heavy trading in Smurfit, Eircom and the two big banks was the dominant feature of the Dublin market as it recovered a little ground after Thursday's profit-taking.

Smurfit has improved in recent weeks but that recovery came to a sharp halt as the company's brokers, Davy, cut its 2001 and 2002 forecasts for the group to reflect likely lower earnings at American associate SSCC. Davy has cut its 2001 earnings forecast by 16 per cent to 16.9 cents and the 2002 forecast by 6 per cent to 21.8 cents. With more than four million shares trading, Smurfit lost 4 cents to #2.19.

There was sizeable two-way trading in the major financial shares without prices actually changing very much. Almost 3.3 million AIB shares changed hands as the price stood still at #12.91 while Bank of Ireland edged ahead 12 cents to #11.75 with some signs of MSCI-influenced buying of the shares. Anglo Irish continued to come off its highs and lost another 15 cents to #4.30.

As the various suitors weigh up their options ahead of Monday's deadline for bids, Eircom was unchanged on #1.16 while CRH drifted 18 cents lower to #20.02. Green - which bought back another 50,000 shares at #7.31 - was 10 cents higher on #7.30. IFG gained 15 cents to #3.35 as Jupiter Asset Management disclosed that it had recently bought more than 600,000 shares to take its stake from 11.1 per cent to 12.24 per cent.