Saturday, November 7, 2009 Previous editions
Saturday, May 23, 2009
THE Irish banking stocks continued their upward momentum, yesterday, albeit at little more than a snail’s pace as the overall ISEQ index of Irish shares suffered its first decline of the week.
Bank of Ireland seemed to run out of steam, creeping up by just another one cent to €1.46, after a strong week’s performance was buoyed by management taking responsibility for its own funding concerns.
AIB was up by nearly 4% – or 5c – yesterday at €1.33, but Irish Life & Permanent (IL&P) lost 2c to close at €3.
The ISEQ, as a whole, was down for the first time this week – but only by 0.62% – or 17 points, to finish the working week at just short of 2,700 points.
Despite a near 4% fall in British Airways’s share price on the back of it reporting heavy losses for its last financial year, London’s FTSE index gained half a percent yesterday. There were also nominal gains – below the 1% mark – on Paris’ CAC and the DAX in Frankfurt.
Back in Dublin, there was mixed news for many of the big Irish stocks. Elan – after a good week – was down 17c at €5.05; FBD Insurance was up another 4c at €6.93; drinks group C&C rose by over 3% – or 7c – to €2.18; bakery group Aryzta lost 70c to close at €21.90; Aer Lingus gained 5c (nearly 4%) to climb to 71c; Ryanair fell 7c to €3.30 and cement and building materials giant CRH added 4c to go to €17.87.
Meanwhile, the euro hit its highest point against the dollar for four months, yesterday – up to $1.40 at one point – as concerns grew that the US’s credit rating could be downgraded, on the back of the country’s rising debt.
The fears of a downgrade grew after top credit rating agency Standard & Poor’s warned of a possible downgrade of Britain’s rating.
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