The share price of Bradford & Bingley gained a further fillip in the last week as speculation surrounding the company's independence intensified.

City rumour mongers were entertaining the prospect of a merger with fellow mortgage bank Northern Rock. According to mysterious emails distributed around the city The Sunday Times was ready to break the story.

The paper then denied these claims and later city banking analysts published their own rationale on why this was likely to be hot air.

German bank WestLB believes Northern Rock could dominate the market on its own, due to its strong cost efficiencies and therefore would not need to enter into any merger.

WestLB went further and recommends investors to sell both stocks due to the current 'market froth'. UBS proffered their opinion; it believes the company will continue to be a bid target as it holds the leading position in the buy to let market. Furthermore, if the acquirer can extract strong synergies from the deal this could generate an extra 111p on top of the Bradford & Bingley share price. UBS has raised its target price to 550p from 410p.

The turnaround at Wm Morrison continues. Analysts at UBS and Oriel Securities have both upgraded the supermarket to a buy rating. UBS believes the market is underestimating improving sales as the company continues to benefit from the Safeway store conversion process. UBS has attached a 240p target price. Essentially Oriel has the same viewpoint. It believes the improvement in sales should continue to push the shares higher.

Finally, parent of Yorkshire Water, Kelda Group has announced it has divested its US water business Aquarion. The total consideration was £491m and the acquirer was the Australian bank Macquarie. Some readers will notice that this is the same organisation that has been pursuing the London Stock Exchange and has ultimately been unsuccessful in that approach. No large profit or loss is expected from the sale and it is believed the effect on earnings will be negligible. Kelda stated it will use the proceeds from the sale for 'general corporate purposes'. An unnamed analyst believed the price Kelda received was in line with Acquarion's US based peers.