Green Property is an immeasurably more impressive property company than Dunloe Ewart, but Stephen Vernon and Danny Kitchen must be tearing their hair out at the company's treatment in the market.

Green has a collection of developments with blue-chip tenants, ranging from major Irish retailers to corporate giants like Microsoft and the Government. It has similar blue-chip developments and tenants in Britain.

But Green's share price has fallen through the floor in the past few weeks. When it fell below €6 (£4.7) this week, it meant the stock was trading at not a lot more than 50 per cent of its net asset value. Property shares generally trade at a discount to NAV, but not at such a level where the market value of the company is just a little more than half its purported break-up value.

That downward movement in the share price followed an abortive management buyout from Mr Vernon and a tentative takeover proposal from Treasury Holdings. It has to be said, however, that the approach from Treasury's Johnny Ronan and Richard Barrett probably got a lot more credibility than it deserved, with the dynamic duo never getting to the stage of putting a price on Green - never mind telling Green where exactly they were going to get the €700 million-plus needed for a bid.

Since those abortive corporate developments, Green has bought back a bundle of shares at around €7 each, but has failed to put a floor under the shares. Against that background, maybe it's time for the Green board to look at the possibility of an orderly disposal of its assets and distribution of the proceeds to shareholders.

If Green could get anything remotely near its forecast end-2001 NAV of €11.70 through an orderly break-up, it might be the best thing for a company that, through no fault of its own, has found that the stock market has fallen out of love with it.