Irish banks fail to escape global trend

With banking shares all over Europe getting downgrades in the wake of the near-collapse of the Long Term Capital Management (LTCM) hedge fund and also exposure to emerging markets debt, bank shares in Dublin came under the cosh with all the major banks suffering heavy falls in their share prices.

Even the Irish banks, which have a non-existent exposure to hedge funds and minimal exposure to emerging markets debt, cannot remain immune to weakness in the global economy and share prices will remain very weak until some action - probably in the shape of a realistic cut in US interest rates - boosts markets.

Bank of Ireland suffered its biggest one-day fall in this reporter's memory, sliding 89p to £11.01, a fall of 7.5 per cent, while Allied Irish Banks was 50p lower on 930p. Other financials also came under selling pressure with Anglo Irish down 6p on 153p, Irish Life down 35p on 460p and Irish Permanent down 22p on 793p.

And as share prices weakened across the board, Independent Newspapers and Waterford Wedgwood, companies where Dr Tony O'Reilly has a common interest, launched share buy-backs.

Waterford Wedgwood bought back eight million shares at 58p each at a total cost of £4.64 million - that 58p price was Waterford Wedgwood's lowest level of the day - down 4p - and is less than half the share's 1998 high of 124p.

Independent bought back 800,000 shares at 235p each and Dr O'Reilly's son Gavin also showed his faith in Independent, buying more than 15,000 shares at 235p each. Independent closed unchanged on 240p.

Elsewhere in Dublin, Smurfit hit an all-time low, falling 3p to 97p while CRH lost 26p to 819p. Among the second-liners, Grafton lost 51p to £11.99, Kerry lost 10p to 770p, Avonmore Waterford was 7p lower on 218p and Fyffes - which bought back a wad of shares at 127p some weeks ago - was 5p weaker on 110p. Tullow lost 7p to 73p in a poor day for the oil and gas sector.

News that mining company Glencar expects to be in profit next year did not excite the market; its shares did not trade. The company said yesterday its Wassa project in Ghana would start to produce its first gold next year. Yesterday, Glencar reported its half-year results to June 30th showing pre-tax losses of $2.1 million (£1.4 million), compared with $52,215 for the year before.

Poor CBT was the clear highlight - or more appropriately lowlight - of the day's Nasdaq trading, with the shares almost halving from the overnight level to $6 7/8 before recovering some ground to trade around $10 at the Dublin close.

A crisis of confidence has been blamed for the departure of chairman, Mr Jim Buckley, and chief financial officer, Mr Richard Okumoto.

Other Irish shares lost ground with Esat trading almost $3 1/2 lower below $30 while Elan was over $3 lower at under $69 as the Irish market closed.