Back in early July, when the Minister for Public Enterprise, Ms Mary O'Rourke, was weighing up the conflicting advice from AIB Corporate Finance's Mr Colm Doherty and Merrill Lynch's Mr Russell Chambers on the pricing of the Eircom flotation, it was just as well that she didn't get greedy and go for the top-of-the-range price recommended by the man from Merrill.

If she had, Eircom's army of small shareholders would be nursing far greater losses than the modest loss they are suffering as a result of Eircom's plunge to below its IPO price. Losses in their pockets have a tendency to concentrate people's minds and certainly if the half million shareholders were down the guts of 40p a share, they might remember it come election-time.

For those who didn't read The Irish Times's exhaustive blow-byblow account of the toing and froing that preceded the pricing of Eircom at €3.90 (£3.07) a share, AIB's Mr Colm Doherty was the bear who pushed for a price between €3.75 and €3.81 (£2.95 to £3.00) while Merrill's Mr Russell Webster was the raging bull who said that demand was so strong that the Government could get €4.28 (£3.37) a share.

With Eircom now plumbing the depths below the IPO price, it was noteworthy that Merrill Lynch was back in Dublin this week plugging the share as good value with a 12-month target of €4.90 (£3.86). Irish brokers are less bullish, thinking in terms of €4.40-€4.40, but add in the one-for-25 bonus share that shareholders will get next July and the dividend and it probably makes little sense to sell now.