Carphone Warehouse shares have ended 10.25p lower at 289p after some disappointment that the Best Buy deal did not encompass a full takeover of the UK business.
To recap, America's Best Buy is paying £1.1bn for half of Carphone's retail chain in a major move into the European consumer goods market.
There had been talk for some while that Best Buy - which has a 3% stake in Carphone - was interested in a deal, either alone or in partnership with Vodafone, down 1.4p to 162.7p.
Even after today's news, the Vodafone story refused to die, with talk it could be preparing to pay around £2bn for Carphone's telecoms arm. However it appears more likely that Vodafone might link up with Carphone in a partnership for wholesale broadband - especially if Carphone succeeds in buying the Tiscali business currently being auctioned - and then buy the operation at a later stage if all is going well.
Meanwhile DSG International - the former Dixons group - added 4.25p to 70p despite the new Best Buy/Carphone combination providing a new competitor in what is already a cut-throat market. The idea seems to be that DSG is now vulnerable to a bid itself.
Elsewhere British Energy fell 19p to 715p ahead of tomorrow's initial deadline for bids, while Barclays slipped after a downbeat Merrill Lynch note ahead of next week's trading update.
All in all, despite the disappointment of the Bank of England deciding not to cut interest rates, the FTSE 100 ended 9.8 points higher at 6270.8.
