ISEQ down as financials suffer

Poor performances among the financials helped drag the ISEQ index of shares down 47.46 points to 7940.29 this morning.

Anglo Irish was worst hit, down 27c to €13.48 in early trading. Bank of Ireland lost 12c to €14.63, as AIB slid 8c to €18.78.

Irish Life & Permanent shares fell back 1c to €20.84.

CRH was also badly hit this morning, down 35c to €28.50.

Meanwhile, Ryanair shares were down 11c to €6.71 as it announced a new route from Dublin to Berlin that will operate daily from June 1.

A number of companies bucked the downward trend. Elan was up 19c to €11.94 in early trading, while Kingspan added 17c to €13.79.

This morning's most traded stocks were Anglo Irish, AIB, CRH, Bank of Ireland and C&C.