Vodafone shares are up almost four per cent this morning after the firm confirmed it is in talks to get rid of Vodafone Japan.

On Friday, the mobile giant said it is talking to investment group Softbank about selling the troubled division. The three line statement did no more than note the press speculation and confirm that it was talking to SoftBank - which "may or may not lead to a transaction".

Vodafone chief executive Arun Sarin told the Sunday Telegraph that he would be returning £5bn to investors. A special dividend of £5bn would equate to 8 pence per share. More from the Telegraph here.

Vodafone Japan had about 14m subscribers in July 2005 - putting it in third place behind DoCoMo and KDDI. It has seen both revenue and Arpu falling in recent quarters. ®