The irish High Court has heard that it is "not credible" to suggest that DCC chief executive Jim Flavin did not realise the significance of trading information concerning Fyffes which was available to him prior to the €106m sale of the DCC stake in Fyffes in February 2000, the High Court was told yesterday.

irish Independent reports on the 80th day of the DCC insider trading case said that Paul Sreenan SC, for Fyffes, submitted that Flavin was also aware of compliance procedures related to share dealings by directors, and he had deliberately sought clearance under those procedures "based on incomplete and inaccurate information".

Sreenan said Flavin, when dealing with compliance issues, had failed twice to mention to DCC's compliance officer or DCC's solicitor matters related to Fyffes' trading in January 2000.

To fail to do that once "might be an accident", to omit the month of January twice was "inexplicable", counsel said.

Sreenan also claimed that when Flavin reported to his own board on March 27, 2000, he also did not tell the board he had the January figures on Fyffes, but instead told them he had information for the months of November and December 1999.

Flavin, he suggested, was a man who was acutely aware of the importance of specific trading figures of companies, and of the importance of definite information as to the actual outturn in a trading period.

Information received by Flavin in January 2000 about Fyffes' trading in November and December 1999 and a forecast for January 2000, was self-evidently at variance with the expectations of analysts and the stock market, said Sreenan.

Flavin was also a person who would have been well aware of the historical benchmarks within Fyffes and well aware that the loss Fyffes was experiencing for the first quarter of the financial year 2000 (beginning November 1999) was the largest in 10 years, he added.

"These figures simply must have jumped off the page at him in terms of their seriousness."

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