A bout of profit-taking saw the ISEQ slip after a four day recovery period, with investors taking profits on the back of the banks' recovery.
"The Irish market's out-performance yesterday bucked the falling trend elsewhere so perhaps it's not surprising we've dropped back today," one dealer said.
Yesterday's profit-taking matched the trend in Britain, where the Footsie dropped again amid a mood of caution among investment institutions. Bank of Ireland slipped 35p to 1540p in eight deals while AIB experienced a 19p drop to 982p in 18 deals. Irish Life dropped 15p to 695p.
The other financials fared a little better. Anglo Irish Bank, which saw some late trading, was up 2p to 184p while Irish Permanent gained 10 to 965p. Abbey National, an 8.7 per cent stakeholder in Irish Permanent, announced that it had transferred its 8 million shares to its investment company, Abbey National Beta Investments.
Among the industrials, CRH closed at 1040p, up 18p on Wednesday's closing deal of 847p sterling, while Smurfit eased off 3p to 232p.
Volumes overall, however, were thin, dealers said, but there was reasonable demand for Kerry which dealt up a healthy 40p to 1075p on positive feedback from the Dalgety acquisition in January.
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