By any standards, yesterday's events on the London and Dublin markets were extraordinary, with bank shares going through the roof after the Financial Times reported that the British Labour government was gearing up for early entry to the single currency.

Speculative the FT story may have been and it was dismissed as such by the British government spokesman, but a belief that the story was well-sourced had an amazing effect on the market, with shares soaring as sterling slumped against the deutschmark.

Market-makers in London were caught flat-footed by the story and were left with lots of money chasing very little stock. Irish bank shares benefited from the surge and may benefit further when technical factors peculiar to the Irish market come into play in the next couple months.

Those technical factors are the injection of cash from the expected takeover of Woodchester and the likely takeover of New Ire- land. At least £300 million will be realised to Irish institutional investors from those two takeovers who will be probably looking to reinvest that money back into the financial sector to keep a balance to their portfolios.

In the Dublin market, there is a belief that trying to put more money into the two big banks would simply add to their dominant position within the index, and so second-line financials might be more likely to benefit. Irish Permanent and Anglo Irish seem to the two most obvious likely beneficiaries of the Woodchester cash.

And Woodchester will be sold, with no sign of Scottish Provident's, Mr John Lawrie finding any allies to try and push the takeover price higher. A price of 263p a share from GE Capital for Woodchester is far from extravagant, but with a six-month process ending up with one bidder at that price, the prospects of anybody paying higher is non-existent.

A decision on New Ireland will not be taken until early October, but it is clear that UAP-AXA wants to sell - the only question is price. Irish Life and Irish Permanent are increasingly being seen as the two most likely to fight it out for a company that will cost more than £200 million.

Other than that, there was little on the corporate side. Kerry and Greencore are still seen as frontrunners for various bits of the British food industry being hived off by Hillsdown, Dalgety and Harrisons & Crosfeld. All of the potential acquisitions are sizeable and may involve share issues, especially by Greencore if it has ambitions to make a British acquisition as well as maintain a sizeable stake in its Imperial Holly associate in the US. Ireland's answer to the AIM market in London, the Developing Companies Market, has been slow to get off the ground with only the small telecommunications company ITG so far on the market.

The arrival of Marlborough next month will give the DCM a welcome boost and will add a sector to the market that was previously absent.

With recruitment booming, a £10 million share issue should be well subscribed.

Finally, Davy's got a little hot and bothered with the IAIM survey which showed its share of the gilt market falling sharply.