The Irish Supreme court has upheld an earlier High Court decision not to allow Fyffes access to DCC documents sent to the Irish Stock Exchange.

The Fyffes-DCC court battle is Ireland's biggest insider trading case and is costing both sides a total of €50,000 a day.

The documents are reports submitted by DCC to the Irish Stock Exchange which concluded that price-sensitive information had not been used by DCC when selling its shareholding in Fyffes.

The row goes back to DCC selling its 10 per cent stake in Fyffes in February 2000 for €106m making a profit of €85m. The following month Fyffes issued a profits warning. The share price collapsed from €4 to €1 over a period of months but this was also blamed on the end of the dotcom frenzy which Fyffes was involved in.

The accusation against DCC's chief executive Jim Flavin is that he knew Fyffes was facing difficult times ahead because he had inside information as a Fyffes director. The relationship between Flavin and the McCann family who lead Fyffes had been warm before this case.

DCC argues that it was well known Fyffes was faced poor trading conditions and that the deal was done by its Dutch subsidiary and not directly by Flavin. If Flavin loses, his company will have to repay Fyffes the €85m profit from the sale.

The Irish Independent reports that the High Court was also told that DCC chief executive Jim Flavin sought to become vice-chairman of Fyffes out of a concern about a concentration of influence in the company by the McCann family.

That concern, it was claimed, occurred at a time in 1995 when Carl McCann was nominated chairman-designate to replace his father Neil and David McCann was appointed chief executive of Fyffes.

Michael Cush SC, for DCC and Flavin, made the suggestion when cross-examining Fyffes chairman Carl McCann in the continuing action by Fyffes alleging 'insider dealing' at the time of the sale of the DCC shareholding in Fyffes in February 2000. The defendants deny the claims.

Cush suggested that McCann's note relating to a suggestion by Mr Flavin that he be appointed vice-chairman of Fyffes was an 'unfair characterisation' of what had happened.

McCann disagreed. He said that at about the time of the currency crisis in 1992 Fyffes had raised Ir£60m in the form of preference shares with a view to buying a competitor. At that time, the McCanns were told by Flavin that the placing would not work unless they put up 10 per cent and they had borrowed Ir£6m to do so. However, interest rates rose rapidly and they found themselves in a very uncomfortable financial position.

McCann said Flavin had been asked to organise share sales to help, but the McCanns had eventually ended up having to sell shares to DCC at a poor price.

McCann also said Mr Flavin had tried to use the McCann's temporary discomfort to procure a much greater degree of control for DCC in Fyffes and it was not exclusively about corporate governance issues. McCann said Flavin had another time proposed that the McCanns and DCC should set up a company to buy Fyffes in which company DCC would be the majority stakeholder.

The McCann family rejected this proposal to take Fyffes private in a deal which would have left DCC with a majority stake and the McCann family just 49 per cent of the shares, it emerged yesterday.

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