THE market worked itself into a lather last week with the news that Vodafone is trying to buy 15 per cent of Japan Telecom. Admittedly the deal, at £1.7bn, was small beer for a company capitalised at £155bn even after the telecoms stocks slump. But it showed that the great white shark of the telecoms industry is on the prowl once again after digesting Mannesmann.

Perhaps because of the scale of the Mannesmann deal or maybe because it has been relatively quiet in recent months, the market seems to have forgotten what a large and hungry animal Vodafone is. It devoured two enormous telecoms groups, Airtouch and Mannesmann, in less than a year and still has an appetite to mop up any minority stakes in its empire as a digestif.

Vodafone's mission is simple. It wants to be the world's largest mobile telecoms operator. By any yardstick, it is less than halfway there, despite its enormous market value. Yes, it dominates Europe and has useful investments in dozens of other countries. But it still owns minority stakes in most of them, not least in the US, which is not only the world's largest mobile phone market but also one of the most underdeveloped.