In brief: Oil falls on hopes for Iraq reserves, Maplin offloaded by Montagu at £85m, Trio head telecom complaints tables

The price of oil was today heading for its biggest weekly drop since March as hopes grew that Iraq’s reserves would be unharmed by the violence that erupted in the country this month.

Brent has fallen more than 1% in the past week to $113.32 a barrel. “There’s still oil coming out of the south of the country,” David Lennox at Fat Prophets said. “Oil will probably continue to drift lower.”

Maplin has been sold by its private-equity owner for £85 million, 10 years after buying the electronics retailer for £244 million.

Montagu Private Equity has offloaded the company to Rutland Partners, turnaround specialists and owner of Pizza Hut and Bernard Matthews, at a time when Maplin was starting to recover from a slump.

EE, BT and TalkTalk today topped the quarterly telecom complaints survey by regulator Ofcom. EE, owner of T-Mobile and Orange, overtook BT to be the most complained-about provider of fixed-line broadband.

EE was also worst for mobile again. BT was most-complained about for pay-TV, with five times the industry average. TalkTalk was worst for landlines.