The Dublin market outperformed its European peers today, rising about 0.5 per cent to 3,273.62 on the back of a strong performance by the banking sector and index heavyweight CRH.
Following media speculation over the weekend that the Government may have to take a stake of 70 per cent in Allied Irish Banks (AIB) in the absence of private investment, the bank lost ground in early trade.
However decent buying interest in the three banking stocks emerged over the course of the session, with the result that AIB closed the day up almost 2 cent at €2.60.
Bank of Ireland and Irish Life & Permanent rose by almost 5 per cent and 2.5 per cent respectively, to finish at €2.84 and just under €5.62.
Cement producer CRH outperformed in the construction industry on a day when most of its peers ended in negative territory, and added some buoyancy to the Iseq. It closed up 1.24 per cent - or 23 cent - at €18.73.
The rest of the market took its lead from stock exchanges around the world which were fairly weak on the day.
Although speculation is mounting that Ulster Bank is considering selling Liam Carroll’s 29.5 per cent stake in Greencore, the volumes traded in the stock yesterday were below average. It closed the session 5 cent off at €1.53, but brokers pointed out that only 160,000 shares changed hands on the day.
Across Europe, the FTSE 100 index was up 0.2 per cent, while Germany's DAX and France's CAC 40 were both down 0.1 per cent.
The Dow Jones index was off 0.25 per cent at 5.00pm.
Additional reporting: Reuters