Busy trading sees Iseq up in early exchanges

A busy morning on the Iseq saw it edge up 38.58 points to 5171.09.

The banks led the way with AIB up 20c to €12.00 while Anglo Irish was up 23c to €12.23.

Bank of Ireland traded up marginally by 1c to €9.96.

DCC was up 5c to €12.80 after it announced that it had spent €26.8m on a share buy-back bring its total to nearly €100m over the last four years.

Hotel group Jury's Doyle was up 2c to €9.70. The company this morning re-opened its newly refurbished 5-Star Towers Hotel in Ballsbridge, Co Dublin.

United Drug remained static on €2.60 after posting profits up 21% of €19.43m for the six months to end March, 2004.

Independent News and Media was down 1c to €1.82. Earlier iTouch, in which the company has a 50% stake, reported its first quarterly pre-tax profit on the back of a 49% increase in revenues.