A mountain of cash drove the market to yet another high yesterday and pushed the ISEQ Overall Index to a level that most in the market thought they wouldn't see until the second half of the year. The enormous demand for stock was once again concentrated on the financial shares and AIB closed just short of another landmark - the first Irish company to have a market capitalisation above £7 billion.

AIB did reach that landmark in earlier trading, when the share reached 825p, but some late profit-taking brought the share back to 817p, still up 17p on the day.

Bank of Ireland saw further heavy demand from investors awash with cash and closed 22p higher on £12.07 after peaking at £12.15 in earlier trading.

There was also some sizeable volumes in second-rank financials like Irish Life which ended the day up 20p on 500p while Irish Permanent - ahead of results in mid-month - was 30p stronger on 920p. Anglo Irish also reached a new high with a 6p gain to 161p.

Volume was lower in the industrials, but many in the sector recorded sizeable gains and CRH reached 902p before closing up 15p on 895p, while Smurfit edged 2p higher to 209p. There were some extraordinary gains among the second-liners with Grafton jumping 150p to reach a new high of £15 while, in the same sector, Kingspan gained 15p to 300p following the report in this newspaper of an imminent expansion into eastern Europe.

DCC - traditionally one of the first calendar year companies to report results - gained 30p to 555p, Clondalkin was 20p higher on 670p while Fyffes was 3p firmer on 143p after the latest share buying by the McCann family. Hibernian jumped 9p to 555p while Kerry gained 20p to 820p on some favourable broker comment.

Greencore's buy-back at 380p received a lukewarm response with only half of the 10 million shares being sold back to the company.