RINGSIDE seats will be at a premium for the judgment in the landmark DCC-Fyffes insider trading case this week. The stakes are highest for Jim Flavin and DCC, but, in truth, the courtroom drama was short on a Henry Fonda, Gregory Peck or Jimmy Stewart.

The basic facts of the case are that in February 2000, DCC sold shares in Fyffes at a record high and netted a profit of €85m. DCC boss Jim Flavin was a director of Fyffes at the time.

Three months later, Fyffes shares fell like a stone on a profit warning and tremors over Fyffes online fruit marketplace, Worldoffruit.com.

Justice Mary Laffoy has two basic questions to address: did Flavin personally deal in Fyffes stock in February 2000 and did he have inside “price-sensitive information” at the time.

DCC claims that the controversial share trade was undertaken by a Dutch holding company, Lotus Green, and that Flavin had no hand, act or part in the trade except to pass on the interest of stockbrokers.

The extensive running of stockbroker tapes during the case was clearly designed to put Flavin at the centre of the deal. Even if Flavin did not “pull the trigger” on the trade, Fyffes claims, he was instrumental in setting it up and setting the price. He did not transact, but he did “deal”.

If Laffoy backs up the DCC version of events, the Fyffes case is not going to move off first base.

If Laffoy finds that Flavin did deal, however, then the man at the back of the court punching the air will be from the Revenue Commissioners.

The Lotus Green subsidiary was registered in Holland to avoid capital gains tax. If Lotus Green did not control the Fyffes stake at all times, and control its ultimate sale, then there is a potential capital gains tax bill of €17m plus 5Å years of interest, plus penalties.

For the Fyffes side, Laffoy will still have to go one step further and be convinced that Flavin had price-sensitive information, and that the steep fall in the share price was due to trading and not the effects of the dotcom implosion of Worldoffruit.com. This will prove much, much trickier.

A score draw is the prediction here. Fyffes will lose the case and pony up the costs; DCC will have to face the Revenue.

Trade winds blow away Stena’s brief advantage

THOSE clever Stena people placed a front-page ad in two Irish newspapers last week, as the Irish Ferries crisis hit its apex. The ferry group urged punters to “book early and get away with lower fares in 2006”. It could easily have read: book early and be sure of getting away.

Irish Ferries problems became Stena’s brief opportunity. Within 24 hours of the ad appearing, the dispute was over.

For the trade union movement, achieving the minimum wage for the new foreign crew members is hardly crossing the Rubicon. The Irish Continental Group was struggling to get workers at €3.80 per hour in Latvia anyway.

Irish Ferries will achieve €11m savings in the agreement, nearly 80% of what it originally wanted, plus a three-year peace deal. Davy has swiftly moved its share price target up to €12.50, some 20% higher than the pre-agreement trading price.

Is the change enough to make ferries competitive against low-fare airlines? Frankly, we doubt it.

And for all the media cheerleading and protest marches, the unions’ dividend is even harder to divine. Higher representation for the legions of lower-paid and migrant workers would be a decent and worthy return but will prove a difficult task. Better this pursuit than continually trying to run the country.

Grocery crusade a choker for Martin

ENTERPRISE minister Micheal Martin last week tried to start the ball rolling on the repeal of the Groceries Order — only for the boys in the Seanad to roll the issue right back down the legislative hill again.

The government’s main initiative against rip-off Ireland has placed the food industry on high alert. Under Martin’s grocery crusade, the Competition Authority — remember, the place where everybody keeps leaving — will assume a greater role in “the monitoring of the structure and the operation of the market”.

The food industry is not going to shop its main customers, especially one of the powerful supermarket chains, to the Competition Authority for anti-competitive behaviour. It is wary of the monitoring role.

After all, one of the leading candidates for the vacant role of authority supremo, ComReg’s Isolde Goggins, endured something of a setback last week when her market-busting attempts in the mobile telephony sector were quashed by a special appeals panel.

The panel decided that ComReg ruled in error when it found that O2 and Vodafone had “joint dominance” in the mobile market. Now the two mobile firms control 90% of the market, so the food manufacturers might chew on that particular appeal decision for a while. Tricky business this, competition.

Callely move does the job

JILTED junior minister Ivor Callely rained on Bertie Ahern’s budget parade big style, but enterprise minister Micky Martin made up for it with a flurry of job announcement stories the following weekend. Amgen is investing €1.4 billion in Cork, Coke is it for Wexford, Google is to search for 600 more jobs.

Junior ministers should resign more often. Buoyant activity usually precedes a big industrial closure. We are watching.

• Aer Lingus boss Dermot Mannion parachuted into Shannon last week to assure the restless natives about the airline’s commitment to the international airport. He has already spoken of preserving 400,000 seats into Shannon.

  With the Shannon gateway status for the chop, Mannion was making positive noises, but a big question mark hangs over the winter schedule. Predecessor Willie Walsh envisaged similar capacity into the mid-west — during the summer months only.

  Mannion is not going to direct planes to Shannon during the winter months while a string of American airlines target direct services to Dublin.

  Even more interesting will be Mannion’s views on Aer Lingus launching US routes out of Cork — Shannon’s biggest rival.