Shareholders in International Securities Trading Corporation, the finance company backed by former Anglo Irish Bank director Tiarnan O'Mahony, have been told that their investment has doubled in value since the company started trading a year ago.

Mr O'Mahony raised €145 million from more than 200 wealthy investors in a private placing at the end of June 2005. Since then, Goodbody Stockbrokers has operated an unregulated grey market in ISTC share units of €100.

The unit price reached €200 last Friday, exactly a year since the placing, and units traded yesterday at €205. The units were trading as low as €130 in May, when the company projected a pretax profit of €5 million in its first full year of operations - in the period to September - and a profit of €12 million in its second year.

ISTC raises debt finance on the capital markets and lends the money on to banks and insurers in the form of Tier 1 and Tier 2 capital and other financial instruments. Clients include Anglo Irish Bank, where Mr O'Mahony was chief operating officer before he quit last year when he failed to secure the post of chief executive.

Mr O'Mahony made light yesterday of the share unit price increase, which marks a top-rate return, and said shareholders put money in the company as a long-term investment. "It's dangerous to over-interpret share prices where volumes are low," he said.

"I'd be careful about over-interpreting it. The volumes are relatively small. In the last six or seven months, about €7 million in value of shares have traded. There's a low turnover. You need to look at any movement in that context."

Mr O'Mahony said there was a long way to get yet before the ISTC would be read for a flotation, already mooted for the third year of trading.

However, he said the company would move towards an initial public offering earlier than year three if that would create shareholder value.

"If we could be satisfied as a board that floating in the morning would create real shareholder value, absolutely, we'd do it," he said. "We certainly won't be looking at it in 2006 and it's very unlikely in 2007."

Mr O'Mahony said the company would not lose the run of itself because it was making annual profits of €12 million and added that the real test would come in year three, when the company would need to be making profits in excess of €20 million.