AMID the usual flattery and stroking that Tony O'Reilly visits upon his shareholders each year at Independent Newspapers' annual general meeting was an exquisite piece of apparently unwitting oneupmanship by the good doctor. He boasted to the assembled masses that in the past 20 years, the Independent share price had grown by over 12,000 per cent. "Put in simple terms," he added, "£1,000 invested in our shares in 1976 with dividends reinvested would be worth £330,000 today."

Meanwhile, at exactly the same hour, Allied Irish Banks new chairman, Lochlann Quinn, was telling his a.g.m. that £1,000 invested 30 years ago in AIB would be worth a paltry £156,200 today.