With New York closed for the Memorial Day holiday and with little happening on other international markets to stimulate trading, yesterday was a pretty dull trading period on the Irish market, with only Smurfit changing hands in size.
Weekend reports that Soros Private Equity is negotiating to join the expected Madison Dearborn bid for Smurfit boosted the stock, with Smurfit trading up 5 cent to €3.17.
The involvement of a heavy-hitter like Soros in a bid for Smurfit would undoubtedly make it a more feasible proposition - especially when it comes to financing a bid that would involve more than €3.5 billion, a third of which would have to come through equity.
Financial shares were generally firmer but volumes were very low. Bank of Ireland - boosted by a positive report from Deutsche Bank - gained 15 cents to €13.70 while AIB added 23 cents to €15.25. Anglo Irish traded as high as €7.05 before ending six cents higher on €6.98.
Irish Life was the exception, losing eight cents to €15.92 as it emerged that American investment house Capital has been taking profits over the past couple weeks. Capital disclosed a 6.8 per cent stake and this indicates that it has sold almost one million Irish Life shares in the past fortnight.
Greencore gained two cents to €3.27 ahead of interim figures tomorrow while IWP gained six cents to €1.51 amid speculation that the sale of the household products division may be a precursor to an MBO move by 11 per cent shareholder, chief executive Joe Moran.
