An unexplained £720,000 handout:

By early this year Hammond was really no further down the road than when the IBI first took its shareholding. With three directors on the board, Richard Cooper, Denis Harvey Kelly and Kevin Wylie, and having also supplied Hammonds' managing direcctor, Dominic Murphy, the Investment Bank of Ireland was really up to its neck in Hammond. When TMG approached it early this year with a view to discussing a takeover, the bank grasped the opportunity to get out.