With European markets pushing modestly ahead, Irish stocks had a better day, with heavy trading in the two big banks in particular.
Bank of Ireland's trading statement might have triggered a round of earnings downgrades across the banking sector, but both AIB and Bank of Ireland pushed ahead in yesterday's trading. Bank of Ireland itself regained 39 cents to €8.24 in turnover of more than six million shares. AIB was nine cents higher on €9.40, with 3.6 million shares trading while Irish Life & Permanent added five cents to €10.85.
Irish Life disclosed that it bought back and cancelled another 800,000 shares at €10.80. It has also emerged that US investor Capital has been an enthusiastic buyer of Irish Life in the past six weeks - a disclosure to the Stock Exchange shows Capital's stake in Irish Life is 24.9 million shares or 8.8 per cent. This shows that Capital has bought more than seven million Irish Life shares since its last disclosure on August 7th.
Among the industrials, CRH also made up lost ground and traded up 61 cents to €16.19 while Elan was 95 cents higher on €50.65. Smurfit was two cents easier on €1.92 while Independent News & Media drifted three cents to €1.69 - almost 17 per cent off the recent placing price of €2.02
In London, Ulster TV lost 8p to 210p sterling after a downgrade from DKW. The Channel 3 consortium in which UTV has a stake has lost out to ITN as the preferred bidder for the ITV news franchise.
AIM newcomer Alltracel fell 2.5p to a new low of 16p sterling.
In New York, there was little change in most Irish tech shares, but by midday Smartforce had plummeted $3 to a new 12-month low of $15.70. In contrast, Datalex regained nine cents to $0.75.
