There was good news and bad news for the Irish Stock Exchange in today’s announcement from Smurfit Kappa that it was moving its primary listing to London. The bad news in the move, largely flagged recently when the group announced its results , was the obvious. More of the shares will now be traded in London, at a time when the Irish exchange is fighting to retain as much volume as possible.

However Smurfit will retain a secondary listing here and its statement today said it remained committed to this as its trading platform for European investors trading in the euro. The rights of Irish shareholders will not be affected in any significant way by the move, nor will they face any problems trading in the shares in Dublin.

For Smurfit the advantage of upgrading from a standard to a premium listing in London, together with the introduction of sterling trading earlier this month, is that it will allow the shares to be included in the FTSE indices. This could happen, subject to a sufficient volume of trading in the shares, at the end of May. As previously reported, Smurfit Kappa will have its sights set on inclusion in the FTSE 100 index, which will attract a new group of investors who focus on putting money into companies listed on major indices.

The Irish exchange will hope to hold on to significant volumes of Smurfit Kappa trading. Other companies, such as DCC, Greencore and Grafton have abandoned Dublin completely, wanting to boost London volumes to try to get inclusion in key indices. At least Smurfit Kappa is keeping one foot in the Irish camp.