Icon co-founder and retired chairman Dr Ronan Lambe has raised more than €8.5 million from the sale of 1.6 per cent of his shareholding.

Dr Lambe sold 219,723 shares at a price of €38.88 each on Tuesday, leaving him with a stake of 8.1 per cent in the company.

Dr Lambe, who set up the clinical trials company with Dr John Climax, served as chairman until November 2002. He remains a director of the company.

Analysts noted that he has been steadily reducing his shareholding over the past few years.

Last year, he netted around €36 million from the sale of one million Icon shares as part of a larger placing with institutional investors. In 2002, he raised nearly €2.2 million from the sale of shares.

Shares in Icon topped $43 (€35.78) early last month, in the wake of good results. But they have fallen back in recent days amid concern about merger and acquisition activity within its client-base, while the sale by Dr Lambe has not helped.

Although his remaining shareholding could be viewed as a potential overhang on the shares, some in the market see his decision to gradually reduce his stake as positive. "You could argue that it increases the freefloat. It was quite a closely held stock in the past," one analyst said.

Last night, the shares were unchanged at €33.61 in Dublin, while they were up by 16 cents to $38.29 on the Nasdaq - their main market - by the Irish close.

Icon floated on the stock market in May 1998, realising $5.3 million for each of its founders at the time.

Eight years earlier, Dr Lambe and Dr Climax had mortgaged their homes to provide start-up capital for the company, which provides clinical research to the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries.