Given the explosive growth in Irish house prices, the performance of estate agent Sherry FitzGerald since it floated on the DCM last year has been distinctly underwhelming.

From a flotation price of €1.57 to the current price in the market of €2.00 (£1.58) is hardly the sort of growth one might have expected from a company which gets most of its income from commissions on house sales where prices are rising and rising.

Of course, Sherry FitzGerald is now trying to portray itself as a property and financial services group, and not simply a commission-taking estate agent. Maybe Sherry FitzGerald will become the broad-based group that Mark FitzGerald suggested this week, but forming a mortgage intermediary business which gets fee income from placing business with mortgage lenders is hardly revolutionary.

Current Account has always had difficulty with financial intermediaries operating on a commission basis, rather than charging clients a fee - whether it is insurance or investment brokers or mortgage intermediaries.

Commission-based businesses might, with the best will in the world look for the best deal for their clients, but as long as they derive their income from commissions from lenders, they will always be subject to the suggestion that they could be tempted to direct mortgage business where the commission is highest.

Another of Current Account's long-time hobby horses is the continuing refusal by company chiefs to split the chairman and chief executive's function, one of the basic corporate governance requirements for fund managers in Ireland and Britain. Mark FitzGerald is, of course, the most recent combined chairman/chief executive and for some reason decided to keep both jobs when Sherry Fitz floated last year.

He is, of course, in good company and in the same doublejobbing club as Michael Smurfit, Chris Horn, Gene Murtagh and Ray McLoughin - who has still to find somebody to relieve him of the burden of chairing James Crean as well as doing the chief executive's job.