In the first part of the paper we prove several results on the existence of invariant closed ideals for semigroups of bounded operators on a normed Riesz space (of dimension greater than 1) possessing an atom. For instance, if S is a multiplicative semigroup of positive operators on such space that are locally quasinilpotent at the same atom, then S has a non-trivial invariant closed ideal. Furthermore, if T is a non-zero positive operator that is quasinilpotent at an atom and if S is a multiplicative semigroup of positive operators such that TS ≤ ST for all S ∈ S, then S and T have a common non-trivial invariant closed ideal. We also give a simple example of a quasinilpotent compact positive operator on the Banach lattice l∞ with no non-trivial invariant band.

The second part is devoted to the triangularizability of collections of operators on an atomic normed Riesz space L. For a semigroup S of quasinilpotent, order continuous, positive, bounded operators on L we determine a chain of invariant closed bands. If, in addition, L has order continuous norm, then this chain is maximal in the lattice of all closed subspaces of L.