Thames Water bidder says it is offering £1bn extra cash injection

A bidder for Thames Water has said it would inject £1bn more into the struggling utility company than rival proposals if it gained control.John Reynolds, the chief executive of the independent water retailer Castle Water, said the current plans under discussion with creditors to rebuild Thames Water’s finances did not go far enough and did not properly address its environmental crisis.Castle Water would provide a cash injection of at least £1bn over current proposals, he told the Times.“No one wants a restructuring that does not stick. The negotiations are not heading anywhere,” he said

WPP shares leap amid takeover bid speculation

Shares in WPP have risen sharply amid speculation that the advertising group could be the subject of a takeover by a rival or a private equity buyer.Its French rival Havas, which was listed on Euronext in Amsterdam in December and is controlled by the billionaire Vincent Bolloré, has reportedly held internal talks about a potential bid as WPP’s share price languishes at levels not seen since the mid-1990s.The company’s shares rose 11% on Monday, making it the biggest riser on the FTSE, after the Sunday Times report, which also suggested private equity groups Apollo and KKR had held internal discussions about certain WPP assets.However, Apollo has ruled out making a bid. KKR, which last year acquired WPP’s PR operation FGS Global, declined to comment

Reeves could allow holiday tax on English hotel and Airbnb stays

British holidaymakers could have to pay a nightly tax on hotel stays and Airbnb-style visits in plans expected to be announced by Rachel Reeves in the budget next week.The chancellor is reportedly preparing to give mayors powers to raise taxes by charging tourists on the cost of an overnight stay in their cities.The tax could raise hundreds of millions of pounds for mayors to invest in transport and public services, but it would represent a further blow for the hospitality industry, which was squeezed by tax rises and extra employment costs announced in the last budget.The trade body UKHospitality, which represents thousands of restaurants, hotels and pubs, said a tourism tax of 5% – the rate to be set by Edinburgh from next July – would mean an effective consumer tax of 27%. That figure includes standard 20% VAT on the hotel stay, as well as VAT on the holiday tax itself, making it one of the highest tourist tax rates in Europe, the trade body said

FCA’s first deputy CEO calls for stronger grip on vital tech firms

The City watchdog has said the UK needs to “strengthen” its grip on foreign tech firms providing critical services to banks, amid growing concerns over outages and cyber-attacks.Sarah Pritchard, who was appointed the Financial Conduct Authority’s (FCA) first deputy chief executive this summer, said there had been “very frequent reminders” of how important it was for the banking sector to have “good, strong operational resilience and cyber controls”.“It remains an area that everybody should pay attention to because of the consequences if it goes wrong,” Pritchard said.Last month, Lloyds Banking Group and the London Stock Exchange were among more than 2,000 companies whose online services were disrupted by a glitch at Amazon’s cloud computing services operations in North Virginia.The episode sparked renewed warnings over the perils of relying on a small number of foreign companies for operating services across the internet, including crucial government and financial services

Asking prices fall as UK housing market hit by budget speculation, Rightmove says

Budget speculation has depressed the UK property market, figures from a leading property website have suggested, with asking prices slipping in the run-up to Rachel Reeves’s much anticipated fiscal set piece on 26 November.The average new seller asking price fell by 1.8%, or £6,589, month on month in November, the figures collated by the property website Rightmove set out, taking the average price tag on a British home put up for sale to £364,833.The data has emerged as the chancellor has come under pressure to reform property taxes, with housing market experts including the TV presenter Kirstie Allsopp saying “people are in a panic” about potential stamp duty changes, and “sitting tight” before the budget.It is fairly common for prices to fall month on month in November, when the average monthly price drop has been 1

Joe Rigby obituary

My father, Joe Rigby, who has died aged 87, was a working-class Catholic boy from Birmingham. He left school at 15, but rose to be a television executive at Granada Television in Manchester.For 20 years from 1973, he was Granada’s head of programme planning, where he hired, inspired and nurtured the team of scriptwriters who wrote the on-air promotions for programmes. Many of them, including Andy Harries, David Liddiment and Dearbhla Walsh, went on to great success as television producers and directors.Joe was born in Erdington, north of the city centre, to Theresa (nee Byrne) and Charles Rigby, who worked in the family engineering company and as a barman