The takeover-driven surge on the major stock markets failed to trickle down to peripheral markets like Dublin yesterday and the Irish market closed marginally weaker, dragged down by a €1.40 fall to €62.00 (£48.83) by Elan, which makes up almost 15 per cent of the index.

The fall in Dublin by Elan was a follow-on to the heavy losses by the shares on Friday after a conference call failed to reassure analysts and investors that the Ziconitide development was on track. Elan was, however, in much better shape on Nasdaq yesterday and was trading almost $2 1/2 higher around $69 as the Dublin market closed.

There was little major price change among the leaders with AIB 10 cents higher on €16.10 (£12.68), Bank of Ireland 20 cents higher on €19.00 (£14.96) while CRH was unchanged on €15.90 (£12.52). Elsewhere, First Active came under selling pressure and fell 20 cents to €3.90 (£3.07) while Greencore - under pressure recently - fell 10 cents to €3.15 (£2.48).

IAWS was unchanged on €4.00 (£3.15), with reports that the group has linked up with Kemira or Norsk Hydro to bid for Irish Fertiliser Industries. Tomorrow is the deadline set by the Office of Fair Trade for Tomkins to sell four Spillers flour mills in the UK, and IAWS has already made its interest clear in these mills.

Elsewhere, share selling by a director did not help the Kingspan share price which closed down 10 cents on €2.35 (£1.85) while Independent was 5 cents easier after its results on €4.15 (£3.27). Smurfit drifted 3 cents lower to €1.90 (£1.50) and is finding it difficult to push much higher while Viridian caught up with recent price movements in London and dealt up 33 cents to €10.30 (£8.11).