Heavy selling of Jefferson Smurfit shares following the overnight earnings warning from International Paper was the main feature of the market. Apart from Smurfit, the market was generally firm with financials recovering almost 3 per cent. Some weakness in Elan meant that overall the ISEQ rose only fractionally.
International Paper is seen as a bellwether stock for the packaging sector, and certainly the scale of its earnings warning came as a shock to the market. That said, both IP and Smurfit's US associate Smurfit Stone regained some ground while Smurfit itself fell as low as €1.82 before closing 10 cents lower on €1.89. Turnover was a chunky 5.4 million shares.
Financial shares were in much better shape with AIB up 48 cents to €11.48 while Bank of Ireland was 21 cents higher on €9.41 after peaking at €9.60 in earlier trading. Anglo Irish, however, lost five cents to €3.15 in turnover of 2.8 million shares.
Elan was unchanged in Dublin on €61.00 but in New York - where the bulk of the trading in the stock takes place - it was trading $2.26 lower on $51.24 in midday trading. With the rights issue now washed through the system, it's back to normal for CRH and the share jumped 75 cents to €17.40. Kerry was 15 cents higher on €12.40 but Marlborough suffered another relapse and fell 15 cents to €0.50.
Ivernia continued its erratic trading in Toronto and in midday trading was 10 cents lower on Can$0.34. Hibernia Foods bounced back from recent post-results selling and was trading more than 9 per cent higher on €5.63.
