Poor performance by financial shares

THE ISEQ Index of Irish shares, after reaching a year high on Monday, closed down for the first session in five, falling 39.93 points to 4673.72 points.

Financial shares performed poorly. Allied Irish Bank and Anglo Irish Bank slipped 1.79% and 1.88% to €12.62 and €8.88, respectively. IFG bucked the trend amongst the financial shares, and gained ground for consecutive days, adding 6.94% to 77c to reach its year high.

Elsewhere, CRH reported lower first-half pre-tax profit of €161 million, a decline of 17.8%.