Market Report:A bad afternoon on the stockmarket yesterday resulted in the Iseq index of Irish shares finishing down 70 points, a fall of 0.75 per cent.

Without a great deal of stock-specific news, the market drifted and was eventually dragged down by poorly performing international markets.

Recruitment company CPL provided the big news story of the day, with a better-than-expected set of results pushing its share price up more than 5 per cent to €6.78, a climb of 33 cent and a closing high for the stock.

The IEX-traded Newcourt Group, which also has some involvement in the recruitment sector, seemed to benefit from CPL's success, also rising more than 5 per cent to €1.78, up nine cent.

The financial stocks were all off, with AIB falling 29 cent to €22.64, Bank of Ireland falling 20 cent to €17.80 and Irish Life & Permanent down nine cent to €21.09. Anglo, yesterday named as the best performing large-cap financial institution over the last five years, more or less held its own, slipping five cent to €16.04.

There were some sellers in Kingspan, which fell 26 cent to €19.63.

Elsewhere, Fyffes finished down 4.27 per cent at €1.12. But the weakest share on the day was Elan, which shed 44 cent to finish on €9.05, a fall of 4.64 per cent.

Sentiment toward drinks group C&C was not so favourable following reports that it might face additional competition in the cider market. The share price fell as low as €11.25, before recovering to a closing price of €11.52, a drop of 23 cent on the previous day.

Donegal Creameries continued its positive run and moved up 10 cent to €6.30.

Ryanair, Independent News & Media and several other stocks finished the day flat.