Closing post
Time to wrap up…
Ofwat has fined Thames Water nearly £123m, including a record £104m penalty over environmental breaches involving sewage spills.
The water regulator confirmed on Wednesday that the penalties would be “paid by the company and its investors, and not by customers”.
The total included an £18.2m fine for breaking dividend rules, the first of its kind in the industry, which was first reported by the Guardian in December.
Meanwhile an internal inquiry at Heathrow has found that the airport made the “right decisions” after the power outage in March triggered a sudden closure. The resulting “significant disruption” affected approximately 200,000 passengers, who were either planning to depart from Heathrow on Friday 21 March or were travelling to the airport on long-haul flights.
Stock markets in the UK and the US have been quiet today, as investors are keenly waiting for a quarterly update from Nvidia, which will arrive after the US market close.
In other news:
Heathrow made ‘right decisions’ after power outage, internal review finds
Thousands of energy customers are in line for payouts over forced prepayment meter fittings
Nissan reportedly seeking to raise $7bn, with backing from UK government
The fast fashion retailer Shein is reportedly aiming to list on the Hong Kong exchange, as it struggles to get the green light in London
Sleeping Heathrow chief's phone was on silent during airport shutdown
Today’s report into Heathrow’s operations outage in March also reveals that CEO Thomas Woldbye slept through the early hours of the disruption because his phone was on silent.
Woldbye reported that he was not alerted to alarm calls from Heathrow, or from chief operating officer Javier Echave, about the power cut because “the phone had gone into a silent mode, without him being aware it had done so”, the report says.
This meant that Woldbye first became aware of the incident at approximately 06:45 on 21 March, and received a debrief from Echave.
Although Woldbye was therefore not involved in the decision to suspend operations, it was within Echave’s authority to make this decision, the report points out.
It adds:
We are aware of some comments in the media that indicate that on the night of 21 March Mr Woldbye appointed Mr Echave in charge of the incident and then went to sleep. Both Mr Woldbye and Mr Echave confirmed to us that this was not correct.
Mr Woldbye expressed to us his deep regret at not being contactable during the night of the incident.
Alongside its other recommendations, the Review recommends that Heathrow considers ways of improving contact with executives during critical incidents, including potentially naming a “second point of contact”.
