Joe Moran could hardly have hung out a bigger For Sale sign when he told The Irish Times this week that unless fund managers gave IWP the sort of rating he believed the company deserved, then IWP was likely to go the route of a management buyout, be bought out or merge with one of the group's British competitors.

It's hard not to feel a lot of sympathy for Joe Moran, who has spent the past 10 years building up IWP into a sizeable household products group, only to see the company punished heavily by its first profits warning and the blind rush by Irish fund managers out of second-line equities.

Golden Vale's Jim Murphy had caustic words for Irish fund managers last week when he talked about them using computers instead of their brains in their headlong rush out of Irish equities. But at least Jim Murphy has been rewarded for a sound set of results by a 20 per cent rise in his shares in the week since the results.

Joe Moran, for his part, has spent £3.5 million (€4.4 million) of his own money buying IWP shares in recent months to show his confidence in IWP. The market is still reluctant to get involved and the €2.10 share price this week is still below the level when he first bought a load of shares in December. No wonder he's frustrated.

Interesting too, that the big share buying by Joe Moran and his fellow-directors was followed a day later by the news that Dermot Desmond and Pierce Casey had joined forces to take 18 per cent of Unidare, exactly the same stake that Dermot Desmond had until he sold out at a £2 million profit last year.

While the Casey/Desmond buying has been seen in some quarters as the prelude to a management buyout, orchestrated and backed by the two entrepreneurs, others feel the alliance between the two is more aimed at realising a hefty profit if and when a buyer is found for Unidare. Whether that takeover is by the Unidare management or an outside group is probably irrelevant.