Thursday newspaper round-up: Hutchison, house prices, Sports Direct, SSE

Mobile phone prices for tens of millions of UK customers would be frozen for five years as part of a £5bn investment drive by Li Ka-shing’s CK Hutchison to win over competition watchdogs to its £10.5bn acquisition of O2. The merger of Hutchison’s Three and O2 would create the country’s largest mobile group, with control over about 40 per cent of the market. That has raised concerns among regulatory authorities in the UK and Brussels, who worry that reducing the number of mobile operators from four to three could lead to skyrocketing prices and falling investment. – Financial Times

It is a staple of pub conversations for London’s young professionals: if I move to (insert name of formerly down-at-heel but now up-and-coming area here) will I be able to afford to buy? Increasingly, the answer is “no”. Fresh analysis of official data shows that in more than half of London’s postcodes, the average property now costs in excess of £500,000. – Financial Times

Sports Direct has dramatically backed down from its legal battle with Rangersfootball club and abandoned efforts to prevent disclosure of the pair’s joint venture, which has made the Old Firm club about 4p from every pound spent in its Ibrox store. An interim gagging order was imposed last summer, blocking Rangers from publicly revealing details of its agreement with the retailer, which contains swingeing clauses and was already subject to commercial confidentiality agreements. By continuing with efforts to extend the order, Sports Direct’s founder, Mike Ashley, who owns 55% of the nationwide chain and about 9% of Rangers, faced being called to the high court to give evidence. – Guardian

EasyJet founder Sir Stelios Haji-Ioannou’s budget food store, which charges just 25p each for everyday groceries, has been forced to close temporarily after less than two days as it has run out of stock. EasyFoodstore closed on Wednesday afternoon and is expected to reopen on Friday morning after it has re-stocked the shelves. – Guardian

SSE has announced plans to shut most of its Fiddler's Ferry coal-fired power plant in April, wiping 1.5 gigawatts of power capacity from the UK grid and worsening the looming energy crisis next winter. The energy giant said it intended to shut three out of four units at the loss-making Cheshire power station, reneging on a Government subsidy contract to keep them running until 2018-19 and putting 213 jobs at risk. – Telegraph

A British exit from the European Union will not open the door to a "golden world" of deregulation, according to the deputy governor of the Bank of England. Andrew Bailey said prime minister David Cameron's renegotiations with Brussels had "a way to go" before the government could say safeguards for Britain's financial services industry had been secured. – Telegraph

Oil prices will rebound by up to 50 per cent by the end of the year as slumping American output helps to rebalance the global market, according to a consensus forecast by analysts. They are predicting that the price of a barrel of Brent crude will rise by more than $15 per barrel by the end of the year to between $46 and $48, according to a median of 17 estimates released yesterday by Bloomberg. – The Times