NOT a good week for Mr Henry Lund, with both the London and Dublin Stock Exchanges rapping his Clondalkin group across the knuckles for issuing a document on the big £58 million acquisition of Van der Windt that the exchanges thought was deficient.
The Irish exchange issued a mildly worded statement but the London Stock Exchange did not pull its punches, effectively accusing Clondalkin of deliberately flouting listing rules by issuing a document that Clondalkin knew fell short of what was required.
London got very hot and bothered about the affair, describing the breaches of the rules as very serious", but in truth it all seems a bit of a storm in a teacup, and hardly justified the lofty position assumed by the chaps in Stock Exchange Tower.
Mr Lund himself was reluctant to get involved in a slanging match with the LSE, but in its own statement Clondalkin made it clear that its shareholders had enough information on Van der Windt to make an educated assessment of the merits of the acquisition.
What was omitted? 1993 financial information on a company being acquired in April 1996. This hardly seems the most crucial information needed by shareholders. Still, Clondalkin did in effect thumb its nose at the LSE and it is that, rather than the actual details left out of the document, that seems to have irked the LSE chaps.
Mr Lund says that Clondalkin was under pressure from the Dutch vendor to close the deal and there was a serious danger of the deal falling through unless the company acted quickly. Getting all the extra information demanded by the LSE could have taken up to two weeks and that could have been the end of a deal on which Clondalkin had been working on for months.
This correspondent is in favour of the maximum protection for shareholders - and also the maximum information. Clondalkin has, with some justification, been accused in the past of being somewhat economical with what it tells its shareholders. That, thankfully, has changed for the better. The Van der Windt saga does not represent a return to the bad old days for Clondalkin.
Otherwise, the market moved gradually ahead, mainly boosted by strong demand from CRH which is seen as an under performer in recent weeks. Results from Irish Permanent, Avonmore and Arnotts were all well received, but Irish Continental produced very much a mixed bag for its shareholders.
ICG's core shipping interests performed well, although the passenger operations to France have now slumped to a degree where it is to become a one ship service. The slump at Bell Lines, however, was unexpected and is the main reason behind a sharp earnings downgrade for the group from Goodbody, which has cut its full year earnings forecast from 55p to 47.5P.
Bell's problems, however, may present an opportunity for ICG to pick up the container line at far less than might have otherwise been expected when its option to buy out the venture capital investors comes into effect early next year.
