A water company has spent £380 million buying a rival utility company, despite calls from campaigners to invest in solving sewage problems.
Pennon, which owns South West Water, has acquired Sumisho Osaka Gas Water UK, the holding company for Sutton and East Surrey Water.
Chief executive Susan Davey said the acquisition would expand the company’s water supply “in parallel with the introduction of water supplies in the Isles of Scilly, and build on the success of similar acquisitions of Bournemouth Water and Bristol Water”. will expand across southern England.
In April last year, South West Water was found responsible for significant environmental damage following an investigation by the Environment Agency and fined £2.15 million for illegally dumping sewage into rivers and the sea in Devon and Cornwall. was punished.
Ofwat said last year that Southwest Water fell below expectations on customer and environmental performance related to bonuses.
This year, regulators will be able to prevent companies from paying bonuses out of customers’ bills.
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what happened overnight
Japanese stocks hit a 34-year high, while other Asian stocks meandered near one-month lows, and bond markets traded cautiously ahead of this week’s release of U.S. inflation data.
Japan’s Nikkei Stock Average, which had its best year in 10 years in 2023, rose 2% to exceed 34,000 yen for the first time since 1990.
The dollar closed at 34,441.72 yen, with exporters driving the market, helped by the weaker yen. Meanwhile, the comprehensive TOPIX index rose 1.3% to 2,444.48, the highest since 1990.
The gains contrast with China, where the blue-chip CSI300 index fell to a five-year low.
Bitcoin has stabilized after soaring after a fraudulent post from the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission’s X account said it had approved a Bitcoin exchange-traded fund.
The S&P 500 and Dow stalled and closed lower on Tuesday as investors weighed the timing and size of the Federal Reserve’s 2024 rate cut ahead of this week’s inflation data.
Expectations that the Fed could start cutting interest rates as early as March are gradually waning.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average, which is made up of 30 leading American companies, fell 0.42% to close at $37,525.16. The S&P 500 Index fell 0.15% to close at 4,756.50, while the Nasdaq Composite Index rose 0.09% to close at 14,857.71.
The yield on the 10-year Treasury note, the benchmark U.S. government bond, rose slightly to 4.017%.