Irish investors have shown a strong appetite for telcommunications stocks both domestic and European. While some 1.2 million have now registered to buy Telecom Eireann shares, NCB Stockbrokers reports phenomenal interest in the pan-uropean retail share offering by Deutsche Telekom.

The Deutsche Telecom share issue is the first of its kind across the euro zone and based on the strong take-up is likely to be shortly followed by others. NCB, which handled the Irish element of the share offer together with Ulster Bank, had to cope with queues in the reception area at one point as investors sought to buy up Deutsche Telekom shares.

The amount of money being invested varied greatly, with private investors placing orders for anything from £10,000 (€12,700) to £1 million (€1.3 million) worth of the shares. The take-up has been strong through euro-zone states and the offer is expected to be over-subscribed.

In this scenario, investors will see their share applications scaled back. Deutsche Telekom offered more than 256 million new shares as part of a fund-raising exercise. The individual share allocations are expected to be decided before June 27th and the stock is set to begin trading on June 28th. Where the full allocation falls short of the amount requested by investors the surplus funds will be refunded by the middle of July.

Dealing commissions are still very expensive throughout Europe and generally an investor should have minimum funds of around £10,000 to put into a European-based stock to make it financially viable. The Deutsche Telekom share offering was one of the easiest and most cost efficient ways for Irish investors to take-up European stocks. Those who subscribed will be entitled to a price discount and bonus shares and cheaper dealing fees.