Saturday, March 06, 2010
IRELAND’s banking stocks had another good day yesterday, as investors continued to bite on the back of this week’s claims by AIB that it has the power to raise around €4bn in necessary capital without further Government investment.
The bank is likely to need roughly that amount in fresh capital to fill the funding hole left after it transfers its dodgy property loans to the National Asset Management Agency (NAMA), starting later this month.
The bank has long-since claimed a number of options are open to it including strategic partnerships and asset sales. It said this week that it has received notions of interest on both levels (the latter particularly relation to its Polish operations).
On the back of those reiterations made to investors, earlier this week, AIB’s share price jumped 20% on Thursday directly leading to similarly positive gains by Bank of Ireland and the non-NAMA-bound Irish Life & Permanent (IL&P).
On a relatively good day for the ISEQ which rebounded above 3,000 points with a 1.55% overall bounce — AIB jumped another 20c, or 16%, to close the week at €1.45.
Bank of Ireland closed yesterday at a price of €1.21, which was up by 12c or 10.8% on Thursday’s close and IL&P hit a closing price of €3.23, which represented a 6.89% (21c) daily increase.
Elsewhere, yesterday proved a quiet day for the few Irish companies active with announcements.
Kenmare Resources fell nearly 28%, or 7c, to 18c, even after announcing plans to embark on the second largest ever fundraising round for an Irish company.
Fyffes and Aer Lingus — the latter of which had a mixed day in terms of staff votes on cost reduction plans and reported poor monthly traffic statistics — both remained static at 42c and 61c.
Notable risers, yesterday, included the likes of Irish Continental Group, Smurfit Kappa Group, Grafton Group, Tullow Oil and Dragon Oil.
However, Kerry Group was one the worst performer falling 52c, or 2.14%, to €23.76.
Abroad, better-than-anticipated employment figures from the US boosted European stockmarkets. London’s FTSE rose 1.3% to 5,600; the DAX in Frankfurt rose to nearly 5,900 and the CAC in Paris was up by 2.1% to just under 4,000.
US markets were showing slight gains in early trading, with yesterday kicking off with strong rises evident in the Far East.
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