Given the poor market scenario it's a wonder at all that Esat and CPL have bothered to list their shares in Dublin. It isn't as if Irish institutions are queuing up to invest in Irish small/mid-caps. Current Account has already been critical of the way CPL has come to the market with such a minuscule free float, so enough said on that for the present.

But Esat has had to change its tack somewhat with its decision to list in Dublin. Initially, Denis O'Brien was insistent that he only wanted a secondary listing in Dublin and wanted to retain the primacy of the Nasdaq listing. Given that Esat's shareholder base is still heavily skewed towards the US, that seemed a reasonable aspiration.

But the Irish Stock Exchange saw things differently and invoked its rules that any company whose business is largely based in the Republic should have its primary listing on the home market. The end result is that Esat will have dual primary listings in Dublin and on Nasdaq.

Meanwhile, Esat's prospectus for its Dublin listing threw up a couple of intriguing snippets, notably that Telenor is thinking of going to the courts to try to remove Dermot Desmond and his associate in IIU, Michael Walsh, from the Esat Digifone board. After selling most of its stake in Digifone to Esat and Telenor at an enormous profit, Telenor now takes the view that it's not appropriate for a 1 per cent shareholder like IIU still to have two seats on the Digifone board.