Smurfit stars as stock twinkles to year high

Two of the longer-established industrial shares were the stars of a reasonably active Dublin market, with both Smurfit and CRH closing well up on the day. Financials, however, were weak and sector leader AIB may suffer from the spectre of the Dail Committee of Public Accounts report into the DIRT scandal.

With US containerboard inventories, due last night, expected to show a greater-than-expected level of box shipments, there is growing speculation that another rise in the price of containerboard will be announced in the next few weeks, a move that flows straight through to Smurfit's bottom line. The shares have been strong of late in anticipation of this price rise and were eight cents firmer yesterday on a year high of €2.99 (£2.35) with Paine Webber and Bear Stearns tipping the shares.

CRH bounced back from an oversold position and closed 53 cents higher on €19.78 (£15.58) while Eircom, though slipping six cents to €4.24 (£3.34), was well supported at that level. Greencore slipped 10 cents to €3.05 (£2.40) despite the disclosure from Mr Dermot Desmond that he has built up a 5.3 per cent stake in the foods group. Fyffes jumped 19 cents to €1.99 (£1.57) and is now 34 cents above its preresults level, with the market anticipating an active year on the corporate front from the group, not to mention the launch of its Worldoffruit.com portal site for the fresh produce trade.

Among the financials, the PAC report was the main focus of interest, although the report came too late in the day to have much impact in the market. AIB fell 11 cents to €11.44 (£9.01) while Bank of Ireland was 27 cents lower on €7.98 (£6.28). The main event on Nasdaq was more profit-taking in e-commerce stocks Trintech and Baltimore after their recent big gains.