The Irish Independent has reported that a retired partner in Goodbody Stockbrokers who held some €500,000 worth of shares in Fyffes plc wrote a series of angry letters to the company from March 2000 suggesting that a profit warning issued that month should have been issued earlier, the High Court was told on the 28th day of the case.

The shareholder queried exactly what information about Fyffes' trading performance in the last months of 1999 and early 2000 was known to all members of the Fyffes board prior to the March 20 profit warning. The shareholder also referred to media comment about the "fortuitous" sale in February 2000 of the DCC stake in Fyffes while DCC chief executive Jim Flavin was a member of the Fyffes board. He warned Fyffes "could have been tainted by the episode".

According to Fyffes chairman Carl McCann, the unnamed shareholder had lost a good deal of money after the Fyffes share price plummeted from March 2000.

But McCann disagreed with a suggestion by Michael Cush SC, for DCC, that replies by Fyffes' then chairman Neil McCann to the shareholder's correspondence supported DCC's version of events as they had developed within Fyffes from October 1999 and were inconsistent with the version of those same events being advanced by Fyffes to the court.