Virgin Mobile was today valued at £500m (€751m) as it launched on the London stock market at a price significantly lower than its previous hopes.

Virgin Mobile today kicked off plans for a London stock market flotation in a move valuing the company at up to £1bn (€1.5bn).

News of a higher takeover offer for Marks & Spencer today put London shares on course to break their recent loss-making run.

RETAIL tycoon Philip Green could ditch his bid to take over Marks & Spencer if talks with the trustees of its pension fund fail, it was reported yesterday.

Marks & Spencer today confirmed that it was probing an apparent attempt to access the phone records of new boss Stuart Rose.

O2 Ireland, the Irish division of UK mobile giant mm02, now has 1,391,000 customers in Ireland. Numbers increased 11% in the year to the end of March.

London shares were heading for their heaviest fall in more than a month today after world markets came under heavy pressure overnight.

Leading shares reached their highest level in 19 months today as merger and takeover speculation gripped the London market.

Mobile phone group mm02 said tonight that it had received a potential takeover approach.

Leading mobile operator O2 Ireland has reported 96,000 new customers in its third quarter to the end of December, bringing its customer base to 1.37 million.

Trafficmaster PLC said it is extending its six-year relationship with MMo2's O2, the British-based mobile network operator, for a further five years.

London shares lost most of their gains today as US investors brushed aside upbeat economic news in favour of profit-taking.

London shares ended the week on an upbeat note as traders refused to let the Turkey terror blasts unsettle them.

The ISEQ shed 67 points, or 1.39%, to 4695 just before 5pm weighted by poor financial stocks and Ryanair.

The FTSE 100 index notched up a new 14-month high today as markets rose on hopes of a strong third quarter earnings season.

Mm02, the company which operates the 02 mobile service, has said that it has formed an alliance with some of Europe’s smaller mobile phone companies.

BT Group, Britain's largest fixed-line telephone operator is going back into the mobile phone business, two years after it sold off its mobile subsidiary mm02.

Tesco said it is working with mobile operator 02 in the UK to launch a Tesco-branded mobile phone service. The joint venture will be known as Tesco Mobile.

Vodafone is to publish its results tomorrow but it is unlikely to follow mm02 and make a massive writedown of its assets, according to the Financial Times.

Mobile phone operator mm02 said that it generated record growth for mobile data services last year.

Mobile phone group mmO2 today said it was comfortable with the City’s expectation of annual earnings in the region of £838m (€1.2m).

Mm02 is to trial the world’s first ‘music over mobile’ service using existing mobile data (GPRS or 2.5G) networks.

The EU Commission has said that it will allow Deutsche Telekom's subsidiary T-Mobile and mm02 to share the cost of building base stations and other infrastructure in the UK and Germany.

EUROPEAN shares shed early gains and fell in late trade yesterday, dragged down

Zamano, a Dublin provider of mobile applications has been nominated for an Annual Global Mobile Award, in the Best Mobile Internet Application category for its TxT Manager.

Though there was a signs of a revival this morning, shares in Vodafone fell all week and on Thursday the closing price was 111p, down 8.5% on the day. This price means that, in market value, Vodafone has slipped behind NTT DoCoMo who has taken its place as the world's largest mobile operator.

Shares in mm02, Europe's fifth largest mobile phone company, rose on Friday after the company said that it expected to beat estimates of £ 410 million for its full year earning.

Mobile operator Mm02, the parent company of Digifone has announced deals with Microsoft and Handspring for the provision of data services over wireless devices.

Dublin-based Zamano has announced the launch of its Community Platform in Europe's first operational 3G network.

Macalla has formed a Technology Partner teaming agreement with Sun Microsystems to maximise mobile e-commerce opportunities amongst banks and mobile operators.

Mobile phone operator Meteor has introduced a new euro compliant web shop, powered by mzone kiosk, Network365's mobile shopping solution for merchants.

Cork company Comnitel Technologies' mSure suite is to be deploy across Digifone's national network.

Genie, the mobile internet business of mm02, has selected Openwave to provide an integrated web, WAP and SMS messaging platform for its 5.8m registered users.

The mobile phone group mmO2, which includes Digifone, has now formally demerged from British Telecom.

At the 2001 Irish Exporters Association Exporter of the Year Awards, Macalla was awarded the best new export award for its Mobility Platform.

Macalla Software, the mobile e-commerce platform provider, has been instrumental in enabling mm02 [BT Wireless' new name] achieve 58% of its global customer growth for the third quarter of this year.

Shareholders of British Telecommunications, which last year bought Esat Telecom, have voted for the demerger of the company's mobile unit.