The Irish stock market recovered from a weak morning session to finish up 29.19 points at 2,895.96, on what was a quiet day in stock markets across Europe.
In the banking sector, AIB was off 2.5 per cent at €1.94 while Bank of Ireland slipped more than 2 per cent to €1.96. After a strong performance on Monday, Irish Life & Permanent fell out of favour yesterday and slid almost 3 cent to €3.70.
Despite falling as low as €16.93 at one point, the Iseq index’s biggest component CRH emerged as one of the better performers on the day, jumping more than 2 per cent - or 35 cent - to close at €17.40.
After dipping to €3.52 during the morning session, Ryanair regained ground over the remainder of the day to close flat at €3.61. However Aer Lingus drifted below the 60 cent level as a few sellers came into the name, and finished at 58.5 cent. “European airlines were poorish across the board,” one broker pointed out.
Meanwhile, software company Norkom stormed ahead by 18 cent - over 20 per cent - to ¤1.06 on the back of a solid set of results, although volumes traded in the stock were very low.
Other winners on the day included packaging firm Smurfit Kappa, which traded up by 14 cent to €4.07. Food group Aryzta remained in favour with investors yesterday and compounded recent gains with a further jump of almost 80 cent - close to 3.5 per cent - to €23.40.
The FTSE 100 closed down 0.43 points at 4,404.79, after losing 1.2 per cent on Monday. In Frankfurt, the DAX index ended at 4,997.86 points, down 6.86 or 0.14 per cent. In Paris, the CAC-40 index closed at 3,296.73 points, up 7.07 or 0.21 per cent.
(Additional reporting: Reuters)