WHAT'S in a name or in this case, a few initials. Well, rather a lot actually - £27 million to be precise - when the initials are KPN, the Dutch telecoms group which is one of Telecom Eireann's strategic partners.

It seems an American investor decided to buy two million shares in KNP, a Dutch paper company, and instead was delivered two million shares in KPN. The paper company was somewhat miffed at missing out on a big overseas buyer of its stock and promptly told the FT that the bank involved in the deal was ABN-AMRO, owners of our own Riada Stockbrokers and London brokers Hoare Govett. Now KPN has gone to the Dutch courts looking for an injunction stopping Koninklijke PTT Nederland abbreviating its mouthful of a name to KPN. The mix-up involving the KPN and KNP shares was finally unwound, but there seems to an element of bad blood lingering between the two sets of initials.

And to think, Anglo Irish Bank's stock exchange code is AIB.