This Week In The Markets

It was hardly the most auspicious week for the Irish market, with share prices following international markets sharply lower as investors took fright at the latest collapse in the Far East, the Russian financial crisis, the nuclear proliferation in India and Pakistan and, not least, fears that US interest rates may be on the way up after first-quarter growth figures which came in well ahead of forecasts.

Of all those factors, the possible rise in US interest rates is by far the most significant and any tightening by the US Federal Reserve's Open Markets Committee will undoubtedly bring the bull market to a halt. That said, Wall Street took the first-quarter GDP figures with some equanimity, with share prices bouncing back after some heavy falls in the immediate aftermath of the GDP figures.

And there were indications that the high-technology sector, which was heaviest hit this week, is recovering, with most of the Irish techies like CBT, Iona, Icon and Elan recovering well in yesterday's trading.

The only exception was Esat, but the fall in this share price is connected more with the secondary share offering which will see existing stakes diluted by 7.5 per cent.

Corporate news was pretty thin on the ground. Green's £146 million hostile bid for Trafford Park Estates may be the biggest ever by the Irish property group, but it has somehow failed to capture the imagination. The general view in the market is that, bar some white knight emerging, the Green bid will succeed, a development that would increase Green's size by 25 per cent and expand its property interests into the British north-west.

The bid by Dr Tony O'Reilly and Mr Peter Goulandris to take Fitzwilton private is also likely to succeed with PDFM becoming the first of the big institutional shareholders to accept the 50p a share offer. Many investors believe, with real justification, that the O'Reilly-Goulandris bid is both opportunist and undervalues Fitzwilton.

It will, however, take resistance from either or both of the next biggest shareholders - Dunnes Stores and Bank of Ireland Asset Management - both with 10 per cent, to frustrate the bid. The Powerscreen fiasco goes from bad to worse, and the latest profit warning from the group has done nothing to reassure shareholders that the worst is over. Fund managers are furious at the absence of information coming from the company and have called for the immediate publication of the KPMG investigation.

The prospect of Cantrell & Cochrane becoming a public company sometime in the next year or so have been given a boost by the apparent decision by Guinness to retain a 10 per cent stake in the company and selling to Allied Domecq only the 39.6 per cent required by the Competition Authority. Guinness obviously believes the 10 per cent stake will be more valuable if and when C&C is floated than the modest valuation put on it by KPMG.

With Telecom and First National already in the traps and with about a dozen other companies lined up for a Dublin listing, the next year and a half will be a busy one for the market.