Share prices largely unchanged in mute response to Wall Street

ANYBODY expecting fireworks on the Dublin market following Wall Street's latest bout of collywobbles was disappointed yesterday, with share prices doing little in very thin trading.

The general reaction to the sharp overnight fall on Wall Street was one of deja vu and market players saw little reason to offer the market. The resilience on major European markets supported the mood on the Irish market.

Price movements were negligible but generally downwards, although Smurfit managed a 1p gain to 157p ahead of today's results. Interest in the Smurfit figures will be more on what the company has to say about current year trading and, indeed, what conclusions can be drawn about likely trading next year.

Other leaders were lower with AIB down 1p on 327p, and CRH down 3p on 360p although Bank of Ireland was unchanged on 429p.

Avonmore has disclosed that Avonmore Co-op has been in the market for almost three-quarters of a million plc shares and has increased its stake in the plc A ordinary shares from 14.7 per cent to 15.6 per cent. In effect, this means that the co-op stake in the plc has risen from 63.4 per cent to 63.9 per cent.

This buying by the co-op is to compensate for any possible dilution in its stake that might result from the exercise of share options held by Avonmore's British milk suppliers. If all these options were exercised, the co-op stake in the plc would have fallen from 63.4 per cent to 62.8 per cent. Elsewhere, IWP was unchanged on 456p despite the earnings-enhancing decision to buy out the preference shareholders in the Levendaal subsidiary in Holland. The buyout of the high-yielding prefs may add up to 1.5p to 1996-97 earnings per share. Greencore was 3p easier on 310p as Morgan Grenfell disclosed a 5.7 per cent stake.

Tullow continued to trade busily ahead of expected drilling news and was 1/2p higher on a new high of 82 1/2p. Almost 3.4 million Tullow shares traded in London and the shares closed well-bid on 84 1/2p sterling.