Green Property's shares have jumped by 13 per cent to €6.40 following a report that it might go private. Managing director, Mr Stephen Vernon, told The Irish Times his board is weighing up the options open to it but no decision to go private has been made yet. The group hopes to "reach a decision in the next month or so".

Like many other property companies, it is dismayed at the big discount in the share price to its net asset value per share (NAV). "We are acknowledging that the NAV has not been reflected in the share price," he said. Green, he said, is not big enough to be considered by the European institutions and is being ignored by the Irish institutions. In the UK, it is lumped in with "the rest", rather than in the UK sector, when they are making investment decisions.

The group, he added, "concluded it was right to have a debate". The plan, he said "might be to soldier on. I am not wild about plans to break it all up".

Asked about approaching institutions to finance a privatisation move, he said Green made no approach but "we were approached" and he noted it was from a "position of strength".

Asked about the suggestion of splitting the group into two companies; one with an Irish portfolio and the other with UK properties, he said institutions want higher focused companies. However, that would "undermine the logic of not having all the eggs in one basket".

Mr Vernon said "we live in strange times. There is a growing feeling that this (the move against small-cap property companies) might not be temporary. And he pointed to the announcement that Green had increased its net asset value by €250 million in 1999, yet the market had reacted by cutting the share price.