ISEQ recoups €1.48bn as banks rebound

BLACK Tuesday gave way to a slightly brighter Wednesday yesterday as Europe’s stock markets, including Dublin’s ISEQ, rebounded from heavy losses early in the week.

Around €1.48 billion in value was recouped on Irish shares yesterday.

Just as it was the banks that pulled the markets downwards at the beginning of the week, the same stocks led yesterday’s recovery.

In Dublin, the main Irish banking stocks all rebounded after taking heavy hits on Tuesday.

Overall, the Dublin market was up by 126 points to 4,786 points or by 2.72% — only marginally lower than early trading yesterday, which at one point saw it up by over 3%.

Bank of Ireland, which slumped by almost 11% on a poor profit outlook on Tuesday, regained more than 7% yesterday, with its share price rising by 32c to close at €4.83. AIB was up by 5.56% at €8.55, an increase of 45c from 24 hours earlier and Anglo Irish Bank rebounded by 22c, or 4.22%, to €5.30. Irish Life & Permanent had a rare good day of late — closing ahead by just shy of 5% — or 23c — at €4.88.

The main construction stocks fared relatively well also, with most showing decent gains. Grafton was up by just over 3% at €3.05 on the back of analyst talk of opportunities for it to merge with mega British rival, Travis Perkins. Kingspan also rose by just over 6.5%, or 36c, to €5.86, and McInerney Holdings remained unchanged at 33c.

CRH however fell slightly by a half percent to €15.82 while Abbey was the one major loser in the building field — shedding another 9.68% — or 30c — to close at €2.80. Earlier yesterday, there had been more negative market outlook reports from the British house building sector, where Abbey also operates, with Bovis Homes saying market conditions were the worst it has seen for many a year.

On a whole, yesterday turned out to be a pretty positive day for the major markets. London’s FTSE finished at 5,530 points, up by 1.6% on Tuesday, also helped by a good showing by its main financial listings — particularly Llyods TSB which saw shares up 6.7%.

The other two big European markets — the CAC in Paris and the DAX in Frankfurt — both finished up yesterday, by 1.5% and 1.3%, respectively. Japan’s Nikkei Index rose by 19 points, but US early trading started with slight falls.