The global impact of the terror attacks was shown this week as forecasts for almost half the constituents of the Irish Stock Exchange were altered by one of the State's largest brokers.
Most of the moves by Davy were downgrades and it blamed the events of September 11th. However, the broker still sees the ISEQ turning in healthy growth in earnings per share for the market as a whole of 9.5 per cent this year and 14.2 per cent next. This is lower than previous predictions of 13.9 per cent this year and 16.6 per cent in 2002 but it is good by comparison with certain markets.
Those suffering the most were generally the index's smaller constituents, with CRH the only top 10 company showing a fall of more than 5 per cent. Breaking away from the general air of gloom were Arnotts and Qualceram, each of which saw their EPS forecasts raised for both periods.
However, Davy has cited company-specific issues, at least in part, for the decisions to cut in certain stocks, including Sherry FitzGerald and Norish.
