The Irish market was slightly weaker yesterday, with a lot of the gains of the previous day being reversed. The ISEQ finished 17.10 points down at 5,406.46.

There was still significant focus on financials, but volumes remained reasonably light. Fears over the banking sector's exposure to the troubled US energy trader Enron, which drove the US markets down overnight, carried over to the European and Irish markets yesterday morning. However, markets recovered somewhat as the day went on.

Financials generally had a weaker day. Anglo Irish Bank, which had rallied strongly during the week on the back of good results, did well to hang on to most of its gains, shedding just three cents to €4.08 on a reasonable volume of 1.3 million shares.

Bank of Ireland continued its downward slide, trading as low as €9.75 at one stage before closing the day at €9.87, a fall of 13 cents. AIB, which traded strongly for most of the week, eased back three cents yesterday on light volumes of just under 300,000 shares traded. Irish Life & Permanent also drifted a little, losing four cents to €11.81. First Active was unchanged at €3.30.

Elsewhere, Independent, which surged nearly 10 per cent on the previous day, also gave back most of those gains yesterday, finishing eight cents weaker at €1.91.

Despite posting good results, Greencore continued to slide, dropping back 10 cents to €2.61 with just around 150,000 shares changing hands. Marlborough, which posted a €1.17 pre-tax loss shed seven cents to close at €0.33.

CRH rallied to break the €18 barrier, closing the day 22 cents stronger at €18.10, while Smurfit drifted one cent lower to €2.38.