Some early demand for the financial stocks in particular ran out of steam once US Federal Reserve chairman Mr Alan Greenspan sounded his cautionary note on the American economy to Congress, but the subsequent selling was pretty half-hearted, with only Smurfit really coming under the cosh.

It's a long way from the heady heights of 277p immediately after the announcement of the JS CorpStone merger, and Smurfit was left offered in size at 191p, down 4p on the day. Both JS Corp and Stone at least held their ground in New York, but the slump in the sector has already led to rumoured discounting of linerboard prices and delays in getting newsprint price rises through.

Some in the market are now also expressing doubts over whether the JS Corp-Stone merger can go through, especially as an integral part of the merger terms is that Smurfit will buy 20 million JS Corp shares from Morgan Stanley at $25 a share. At the current JS Corp share price, that would leave Smurfit sitting on a $212 million (£150 million) loss on the deal with Morgan Stanley.

Another stock to take a pounding was Iona which, despite trumpeting its "record results", fell over $5 to $30 3/4 on Nasdaq before recovering to trade around $33 at the close.

Analysts said that Iona results were disappointing to the extent that sales outside the US were disappointing.

Iona has now fallen from $40 1/4 since last Wednesday.

Among the financials, AIB ended 7p easier on £11.25 while Bank of Ireland closed 7 1/2p higher on £15.24 1/2 in a late sterling deal. CRH was 6 1/2p easier on £10.40 1/2 while Waterford Wedgwood continued to suffer from its Asian exposure and lost 3p to 98p.

Green was unchanged on 477p; Morgan Stanley has emerged as the buyer of three million shares at that price in a late deal on Monday.