Friday newspaper round-up: TalkTalk, EDF, Google

TalkTalk has signed a deal with Vodafone to launch a mobile phone service under its own brand - but it will target only its existing broadband customers.

The deal will increase competition in the mobile phone market and should put pressure on prices. The telecoms provider, which has 4.2m customers, will announce the deal with Vodafone today alongside a trading statement for the first quarter, the Times reports.

EDF has agreed to sell its UK electricity grids business to Sir Li Ka-shing, the Hong Kong billionaire, for more than £5.5bn, according to reports. Hongkong Electric and Cheung Kong Infrastructure outbid a consortium including Macquarie bank, the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, and Canada Pension Plan, the Times reports.

Google's internet search services were last night blocked in mainland China just three weeks after a denouement between the technology giant and the secretive superpower appeared to have been reached. Google's regular monitoring of its operations in the country revealed that its search services had been fully blocked, with no apparent warning from the Beijing government, the Telegraph reports.

HSBC is plunging headlong into Russian equities as it makes the world's biggest bet on the rising middle classes of Asia, Latin America, and the commodity bloc. The bank is the top global investor in the BRIC quartet of Brazil, Russia, India, and China, with $90bn of assets in emerging markets. It has raised the Russia weighting of its BRIC funds to over 30%. India has slipped to 20%, the Telegraph reports.

People queued around the block yesterday to open a new account at Metro Bank, the first new high street lender to open its doors in more than 100 years. The last time there were queues around a British bank the circumstances were very different. Northern Rock inspired panic and a run on its branches when in September 2007 it admitted it had appealed to the Bank of England for emergency funding, the Times reports.

Exxon Mobil, the $284bn (£182bn) oil super-major, has powered ahead of its closest rivals BP and Royal Dutch Shell by almost doubling its quarterly net profits to $7.6bn. The second quarter figure almost matches the profits it was making in July 2008, when the oil price reached a record $147 a barrel. Exxon's earnings significantly exceeded analyst estimates, jumping 91pc from $3.95bn in the same period of 2009, when oil prices were lower, the Telegraph reports.

US banks are taking advantage of improving earnings and growing investor demand to raise billions of dollars in debt at historically low interest rates, a move that could boost the sector's profits in coming years.The burst of fundraising in the US is in stark contrast to Europe where banks have struggled to issue debt as the eurozone crisis and worries about the financial industry have undermined market confidence, the FT reports.

Royal Dutch Shell mounted a spirited defence of deep-water drilling yesterday as it unveiled a 94 per cent surge in profits in its second quarter. The oil giant's chief executive Peter Voser stressed the oil industry's "shock" at the explosion at BP's Macondo well in the Gulf of Mexico that killed 11 people, unleashed the worst oil spill in US history and claimed the scalp of BP chief executive Tony Hayward this week. "The Macondo blow-out and the related oil spill is a tragedy for everyone affected," Mr Voser said yesterday. "We were all shocked by the loss of life there, and the on-going and widespread impacts from the spill," the Independent reports.

Despite attempts by the Government and the Bank of England to encourage the banks to lend to the "real economy", the supply of credit to businesses is still shrinking, while the supply of mortgages is only crawling ahead. The Bank of England data, released yesterday, showed that loans to non-financial companies fell by £7.7bn in June, or about 6.4% a year. Lending to manufacturing decreased by £2.4bn, the Independent reports.