In what traders called an “interesting day” for the Irish market, a late afternoon rally saw the Iseq Overall Index edge into positive territory. The index of Irish shares finished at 6,392.50, a gain of 17.50 or 0.28 per cent.
The announcement by Bradford & Bingley that it would seek an additional £300 million in funding from existing investors drove down the FTSE banking sector, but the Irish banks outperformed their UK peers.
One trader pointed out that Bank of Ireland and Irish Life and Permanent were perceived as the most likely of the Irish banks carry out a rights issue.
Glanbia saw a lift from a bullish interim management statement that said it was seeing double-digit revenue growth for the first half of the year. The stock gained 20c to €5.20.
C&C was another stock that outperformed its sector, finishing up 1.1 per cent at €5.36, which traders attributed to large institution who has been in the market building a stake in recent days.
Building supplies group Kingspan was down almost 2.5 per cent to €7.45 in advance of its agm tomorrow.
The FTSE 100 index of British shares gained 4.1 points to 6,216.0, after earlier falling as low as 6,167.9. It was a turbulent trading session largely due to mixed data on inflation from the Bank of England and the US Fed.
The major European markets were all in positive territory. France’s CAC 40 was up 56.57 to 5,055.24 while Germany’s DAX gained 23.05 to 7,083.24.
The Dow Jones and Nasdaq share indexes gained over 1 per cent in the morning session as better-than-expected US government data on inflation eased concerns that the Fed might raise interest rates.