Britain's Vodafone Group offered the highest bid - £3.81bn - in an auction yesterday to buy Telsim, Turkey's second-largest mobile telephone company. Vodafone outbid Kuwait's MTC Telecommunications in the closely fought open auction. Telsim, which holds about 25 per cent of the Turkish market, is estimated to have almost ten million customers and the Turkish government had previously estimated its value at £2.3bn. Its sale to Vodafone is subject to government approval.

RESTAURANT OPENINGS: Tapas restaurant group La Tasca announced plans to accelerate its expansion yesterday after achieving half-year profits growth of 92 per cent. The Manchester-based company said it would open eight restaurants in the UK before April, bringing its number of openings to 14 in this financial year - three more than initially planned. The news comes after profits shot up from £1.4m to £2.7m in the six months to October 30, resulting in a maiden interim dividend of 37p a share.

Lower revenues: Newspapers group Johnston Press yesterday said advertising revenues were running seven per cent lower after demand for job adverts slumped. The owner of titles including the Yorkshire Post and Sunderland Echo said revenues from recruitment advertising was 23 per cent lower than a year earlier in the five months to the end of November. It added that the market showed no immediate sign of easing, although Johnston said results for 2005 would still show "a year of progress". Yesterday, the company said employment advertising was the worst hit in the second half of this year, and without the 29 per cent increase in revenues from its Internet sites it would have fallen by 25 per cent.