Closing summary
Stock markets tumbled in Europe and Asia, with UK and European indices losing between 1.1% (FTSE 100) and 1.7% (Italy’s FTSE MiB). On Wall Street, the Dow Jones gained 0.3% while the S&P 500 rose 0.5% and the Nasdaq added 0.7%.
The parent company of troubled Thames Water has told its creditors it has defaulted on its debt, raising the prospect that the company could collapse or face a significant restructure.
Kemble Water has missed an interest payment that was due on Tuesday and said it was requesting its lenders and bondholders to take no creditor action so as to “provide a stable platform while all options are explored” with its stakeholders.
Britain’s biggest water company said last week its shareholders had refused to pay £500m promised to stabilise its finances, heightening concerns over its survival.
UK house prices fell in March for the first time in six months as more costly mortgage deals and continued uncertainty about when the Bank of England would start cutting interest rates hit the property market.
House prices fell by 1%, or £2,908, in March compared with February, according to Halifax’s house price index. The average property now costs £288,430. Compared with the same month last year, property prices were up 0.3%.
Other main stories:
The US workforce added 303,000 jobs last month, far more than expected and the 39th straight month of job gains in the US. The unemployment rate dipped to 3.8%.
Joe Biden hailed the report as “a milestone in America’s comeback”.
The shorts worn by Muhammad Ali during his famous “Thrilla in Manila” fight in 1975 are expected to smash auction records at Sotheby’s in New York next week.
The white satin Everlast trunks, which Ali signed with a black Sharpie pen, have attracted bids of $3.8m (£3m) in an online auction that closes on 12 April. That puts the trunks on course to become the most expensive item of Ali memorabilia sold at auction. Experts at Sotheby’s said they expected bids to increase to as much as $6m.
Rail passengers across England will face significant disruption on Friday as train drivers at five operating companies carry out industrial action.
The 24-hour strike will be the first of three days of rolling strike action being taken by the train drivers’ union Aslef, with services on Avanti West Coast, CrossCountry, East Midlands Railway, London Northwestern Railway and West Midlands Railway all affected.
Starbucks paid a “derisorily low” £7.2m in UK corporation tax last year despite making a gross profit of £149m on sales of £548m in Britain.
Its UK division, which has faced years of criticism for paying very little to the Treasury, paid £40.4m in royalty and licensing payments to a parent company, more than five times the amount it paid in tax to HM Revenue and Customs.
McDonald’s is buying its 30-year-old Israel franchise from Alonyal Ltd, taking back ownership of 225 restaurants in the country that employs more than 5,000 people, the companies said on Thursday.
The US fast-food chain has been subject to boycotts and protests since Alonyal announced shortly after the 7 October attack by Palestinian Islamist group Hamas that it would be donating free meals to Israeli military.
McDonald’s is a global chain but its franchises are often owned locally and operate autonomously.
Many popular US bandage brands contain alarming levels of toxic PFAS “forever chemicals”, new research suggests, raising questions about the products’ safety.
Testing of 40 types of bandages made by companies such as Band-Aid, Curad, Walmart and CVS found 26 products, or 65%, contain alarming levels of a marker of PFAS. The chemicals were detected in the adhesive flaps and in absorbent pads that press against wounds.
With thick black frames and hidden cameras, the glasses look designed for espionage or the metaverse but instead the eye-tracking headgear is being deployed to get inside shoppers’ heads as part of the drive to cut plastic packaging from the weekly food shop.
It is an unlikely scene. Hooked up with the glasses a shopper is being tailed around a Waitrose produce department by a researcher carrying a large tablet that displays live footage of them picking up banal things such as potatoes, apples and bananas.
Back to our main story. Mathew Lawrence, director of the Common Wealth think tank, called for Thames Water to be brought back into public ownerhip:
News that Thames Water’s parent company has defaulted underscores the fundamental risk in privatising our essential utilities. The corporate house of cards — over-leveraged while underinvesting — now risks collapsing with the public left to pick up the pieces.
More radical plumbing is required. A bailout or regulatory tweaks to a broken model is a sticking plaster that won’t fix this leaking faucet. Instead, Thames Water should be brought back into public ownership, with the water system run for public benefit, as is common in the vast majority of countries around the world.
At Common Wealth, we’ve shown how this can be achieved under existing legislation, with scope for the costs of transfer to be reduced or eliminated.
