There was a distinctly negative tone to the Irish market yesterday. The fall in the ISEQ would have been considerably more than 0.5 per cent, were it not for gains by Elan.

Dealers said that the continued weakness on London as a result of the Marconi debacle, Baltimore's latest trials, the prospect of downtime at Intel and various other factors conspired to flood the market with negative sentiment.

There was no huge level of trading in the leaders, and the biggest trading was in Fyffes, where more than nine million shares dealt as the share gained three cents to €1.26.

The sellers of Fyffes over the past couple of weeks seem to be BIAM and AIBIM, both of whom have disclosed sharply reduced shareholdings, and the main buyer is thought to be a British hedge fund.

One name being mentioned as possibly the recent big Fyffes buyer is hedge fund Edgerton.

There was also heavy trading in Golden Vale, where almost four million shares dealt at €1.49 and €1.50. This is thought to largely involve arbitrageurs taking positions on the proposed Kerry offer of €1.54 a share.

Heavy trading in Eircom shares was also down to abritrageur activity.

Among the leaders it was a sea of red ink, with Bank of Ireland down 32 cents on €11.26, AIB 22 cents lower on €13.08 and CRH down 45 cents on €20.45.

On overseas markets, Baltimore collapsed 8p to 17p sterling after its latest trading shocker but Parthus rebounded from a low of 32p to close 8-1/2p higher on 50p sterling after disclosing it was trading in line with expectations and that there was nothing to explain the recent slump in the shares.