Orange ready to float

France Telecom has set out the details for the flotation of Orange - and depressed the market in doing so.

The shares will be priced at between £7.35 and £8.62 each, valuing the company at £41.4 billion at the most.

This is less than half the £100 billion that France Telecom was hoping for when it merged Orange with its own mobile phone interests last year.

As the City expected, the issue is 'priced to go', with private investors being offered a discount of 32p a share - around 4%.

More than 400,000 private investors in the UK are believed to have signed up for shares, and this figure is likely to rise to half a million over the next few days.

The minimum share application is £250 in the UK and 25 shares in France, Germany and Italy.

The interest from the general public compares with a general loss of appetite from within the City for mobile phone stocks, due to fears over spiralling debt in the European telecoms sector and a re-evaluation of the worth of new media stocks.

The partial flotation comes as Orange nears the number two spot in the UK's mobile phone market.

France Telecom is selling 13% of its stake, though this might increase to 15%. But, according to France Telecom chairman Michel Bon, there is no likelihood of its stake dropping below the 50% level.

The company says the flotation will raise around £5 billion, which it will use to refinance the aquisition of Orange and to invest in making Orange one of the mobile leaders in Europe and beyond.