Vodafone Share News (VOD)

Regulators are under pressure to open an investigation into the suspected manipulation of the closing prices of ordinary shares traded in London after it was claimed in Parliament yesterday that attempted market abuse was rife. Andrew Tyrie, the Chairman of the Treasury select committee, said all committee members were "amazed" that no one at the Financial Conduct Authority appeared to have looked at the issue in spite of widespread rumours of manipulation. - The TimesFinancial markets will be subject to more frequent cycles of boom and bust in the future despite banks becoming less risky, the Bank of England's chief economist has warned. Andy Haldane claimed the development was a consequence of risk being passed from traditional banks to "non-banks", such as insurers and pension funds, in the aftermath of the financial crisis. Risk has not been removed from the system, he said, it is simply "migrating off the balance sheet of banks on to the balance sheet of non-banks in the form of market illiquidity risk." - The Times The City regulator has "no clear evidence" that banks are rigging the price of gold, although the process to set it is open to abuse, an official at the watchdog has said. David Bailey, the head of market infrastructure and policy at the Financial Conduct Authority, told MPs on Wednesday that participants in the 95-year-old gold fix could potentially manipulate it. "It is possible, but I have no clear evidence that that has actually happened," Mr Bailey told the House of Commons Treasury select committee. -The Daily Telegraph Swathes of Ireland's broadband infrastructure will be better than Britain's within a few years, after Vodafone signed up for a €450m (£358m) joint venture to string fibre-optic cables along power lines. Alongside the Republic's state-owned electricity board, ESB, it will create a broadband network providing download speeds of between 200 and 1,000 megabits per second to half a million homes and businesses in 50 Irish towns. That represents roughly a quarter of premises nationwide and there is scope in the plans for further expansion. - The Daily TelegraphThe wholesale price of electricity should remain flat and could even fall, according to new research from the rating agency Moody's which will be welcomed by government and consumers. New offshore wind farms, better insulated houses and the possibility of weaker gas prices are likely to combine to help halt what many expected to be a steady rise in retail prices. - The Guardian Violent clashes erupted in Jerusalem over the killing of an Arab teenager that Palestinians blamed on Jewish settlers, raising fears of a spiral of vengeance spurred by the earlier killings of three Israeli teenagers. The body of Mohammed Hussein Abu Khdeir was found in a wooded area of the city on Wednesday, a day after the burials of three Israelis who were killed in the West Bank. The three went missing on June 12 and were found dead on Monday after a nearly three-week search. Israel has blamed the Palestinian Islamist militant group Hamas. - The Wall Street Journal EuropeAB