DUBLIN REPORT: Settlement date: August 5th Iseq: 2,791.10 (-7.81)DEALERS SAID that the Dublin market was dominated by the reaction to the legislation establishing the National Asset Management Agency, which was published after the market closed on Thursday. There were large volumes of trades in both main banks and they ended the session in positive territory.

Bank of Ireland was the largest gainer, ending the day up 9.2 per cent at €2.00. There was significant interest in the stock – 17 million trades were executed, compared to a daily average of 9 million over the last three months.

AIB, which has a larger exposure to property developers, added 3.5 cent or just over 2 per cent, to close on €1.76.

Although it did not provide development loans, Irish Life & Permanent benefited from the positive sentiment towards the sector. It was up 4.9 per cent to €3.44 although just 1.1 million shares were traded – half the average for recent months.

The overall index was flat on the day – it was down 7.81 points or 0.28 per cent to 2,791.10 but traders noted that there was significant movements among the constituent members.

Market heavyweight CRH suffered from a sell-off at the close and finished down 2.3 per cent at €16.75 after treading water for most of the session. One trader said that in the absence of any strong newsflow the market was acting “counter-intuitively”.

Grafton, which benefited from strong results from British builders merchant Travis Perkins in mid-week, added 4 per cent yesterday to close €3.38, but building materials group Kingspan shed over 5 per cent to €4.72.

After a torrid week for European airline stocks, both Ryanair and Aer Lingus lost some altitude. The budget airline was down 2.05 per cent to €3.10, while the flag carrier lost 2.2 per cent to close on €0.45.