Closing post
Time to recap…
The chair of Thames Water has admitted its finances were “hair raising”, as he said bosses were in line for “substantial” bonuses linked to an emergency £3bn loan.
The UK’s biggest water company came within just five weeks of running out of money, Adrian Montague told MPs on Tuesday.
“Thames in the last year has come very close to running out of money entirely,” he said. He added there were times where it only had weeks’ worth of cash left.
“Running a £20bn corporation on five weeks’ liquidity, honestly, it’s hair raising,” he said.
Montague also said some executives at the struggling water company were in line for payouts amounting to “50% of salary, very substantial bonuses” as part of the high-interest emergency debt package, which was approved by the high court in February.
During the hearing, chief executive Chris Weston also warned that he couldn’t guarantee there wouldn’t be restrictions on water use this summer, but was confident that Thames wouldn’t run out of water.
Weston said the crisis at Thames had been ‘decades in the making’, due in part to a lack of leadership and turnover in the boardroom.
Montague insisted that the new team was committed to fixing the problems at Thames.
Elsewhere today…
Inflation in the US has dropped to a four-year low in April, the month that Donald Trump announced his sweeping “liberation day” tariffs on the US’s largest trading partners.
The annual inflation rate was 2.3% in April, down from an annual rate of 2.4% March, according to a new inflation report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
The unemployment rate in the UK has risen to its highest level in almost four years, according to official figures, as the jobs market continues to slow.
The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said the rate was 4.5% in the first three months of this year, up 0.2% on the previous quarter and the highest reading since summer 2021.
The ONS also reported that UK wage growth slowed, as firms reduced their vacancies and cut the number of staff on their payrolls.
Wall Street has opened higher, as investors welcome the drop in US inflation today.
The S&P 500 share index gained 0.64%, up 37 points at 5,881 points.
The tech-focused Nasdaq has risen by over 1%.
The drop in inflation may be reassuring traders that the Federal Reserve will have space to cut interest rates this, if it needs to stimulate the US econonomy.
The Dow Jones industrial average is in the red, though, down 119 points at 42,290.86 points. It’s been dragged down by UnitedHealth (-13%), which today announced that CEO Andrew Witty was quitting immediately for “personal reasons” as it suspended its annual outlook.
