The usual story with Vodafone is the Verizon saga. I just think that this story has got legs to run on it," says Central Markets chief strategist Richard Perry. Vodafone's rise helped pull the wider FTSE 100 up 1pc, to 6,475.97 points by mid-morning. The FTSE 250 also rose nearly 1pc to 14,059.97 points. Interdealer broker ICAP topped the mid-cap index, rising 7pc as it was buoyed by positive read-across from a deal by US exchange operator Nasdaq to buy Treasuries-trading platform eSpeed from BGC Partners. ICAP owns rival platform, BrokerTec, and analysts at ShoreCapital said the eSpeed deal implied a value for BrokerTec of £1.6bn, compared with ICAP's market cap of about £2bn. FirstGroup jostled for top spot with ICAP, enjoying similar gains of about 7pc, after analysts at Bank of America Merrill Lynch raised the stock to "buy" and increased their target price on the stock to 240p from 145p.