Patience with the fickle nature of investors has snapped finally at Clondalkin where management has announced plans to buy out existing shareholders and take the company private with the help of venture capitalists. The action is a logical step for the company, which has consistently bemoaned the inability of investors to see beyond the front-line constituents of the Irish Stock Exchange in their search for value. Nonetheless, it is the first Irish publicly listed group to take such radical action in the face of investor apathy.

The final straws appear to have been the poor recovery of the share price following the Asian crisis-induced slump of last autumn compared with its larger peers on the exchange and the arrival of the euro. As chairman Henry Lund pointed out, while growth in profits matched that of CRH over the period, the latter's shares price advanced 148 per cent while Clondalkin's struggled to achieve its 48 per cent rise.

The euro's advent has only exacerbated the difficulty of smaller shares in attracting institutional interest as funds look to cherry pick the larger European stocks for their portfolios, offloading smaller issues.

Ironic really that companies are now going private to attract investment as, until recently, the reverse was very much the rule.