the Margin was gradually labouring his way through a dull first working day of the year in the markets when at 5.30 p.m., the daily ISEQ figures came across the tax line. Shock horror, the index was showing the Dublin market down over 14 per cent and the financial shares 36 per cent lower. Billions had been wiped off the market What had happened? Had a stripy shirted trader down at the IFSC done a person on one of the banks?

Seems that a deal in AIB at 339p was actually logged as a 339p fall in the bank's shares a tall that would have wiped the Bank centre off the dealing map.