MPs then turn to the BBC’s recent (revealing) documentary into the Thames Water crisis,Q: Why did CEO Chris Weston tell the BBC that “I won’t know how it got this way”, after 10 months at the company? What’s his analysis today?Weston replies that he has a pretty clear idea now, and was also pretty clear then, but questions the value of “talking about it publicly and pointing the finger” [in which case, why allow TV cameras into the company?!],Weston tells the EFRA committee there are “many authors” responsible,He says:I’m clear how we got here,This has been decades in the making, the crisis we face at Thames.

I think all actors had a role to play in this.Absolutely, the company and management has got something wrong.Five chief executives in five years is not a recipe for success, and I would argue consistency in leadership is a very important part of what we need to do now.But, Weston also takes aim at the UK’s regulatory regime, saying it is flawed.Regulators need to attract investment into the sector, and allow companies who are in trouble to turn around and improve – Weston argues that it doesn’t do that at the moment.

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.Starling Bank has been ordered to launch an external review and boost compliance training after CMA said it had concerns about an “underlying weakness” in the online lender’s procedures.The challenger bank’s breaches related to data it fed into customer satisfaction surveys, which it regularly tops.It was found to have excluded 17% of personal account customers from data handed to a market research company in both 2023 and 2024, and also overstated the total number of accounts held by customers to the competitions regulator between 2020-2023.It comes months after the bank was hit with a £29m fine by the Financial Conduct Authority in October 2024, over “shockingly lax” controls that the FCA said left the financial system “wide open to criminals”.

That included failures in its automated screening system for individuals facing government sanctions.The CMA said on Tuesday that excluding a large number of customers from the data was a “material breach”, and while the impact on the rankings was likely “negligible”, it risked undermining consumer confidence in the survey results.The CMA said it was “concerned that there may be an underlying weakness in Starling Bank’s procedures.” It added:“The CMA has concerns that formal action may be necessary to prevent a recurrence.This is because Starling Bank has now breached the requirements to provide full data on current account holders twice and we are not convinced that Starling Bank is capable of preventing further breaches through the initiatives mentioned above.

”Starling said that the exclusions were due to a lack of appropriate oversight, and that the over-reporting was a misunderstanding of the regulatory requirement,Starling itself notified the CMA of the breaches last year and was called into the regulator in November to discuss the matter,The bank has now been issued with directions that include hiring an external firm to carry out a review of its processes and procedures, and will now have to provide extra compliance training for staff,Starling said in a statement:“Last year we identified some reporting errors related to the CMA’s customer satisfaction surveys,We informed the CMA of our findings, we apologised, and we changed our processes to prevent a recurrence.

We are pleased that the CMA has now determined that the impact on customers was ‘negligible’ and that the bank has overpaid rather than underpaid its dues.We will continue to work constructively with the CMA because we share their goal of ensuring that people can see which banks are listening to their customers and meeting their needs.”MPs also heard today that Thames Water’s senior executives will receive large “retention incentives” funded through the £3bn emergency loan it agreed recently.Chair Sir Adrian Montague told the EFRA committee that the deal “required” Thames to create a retention plan for its senior management team, which he called “our most precious resource”.That plan will pay out in three installments – when the first restructuring plan is agreed, then when the second restructuring is agreed, and then a larger amount at the end of the process.

The first two installments are worth 50% of salary, which Montague agrees is “very substantial”,He reveals its the first time he’s encountered this sort of deal,And he denied that Thames was swayed to choose the funding offer from its A-class creditors, rather than a rival offer, at a lower interest rate but no such retention scheme, from B-class shareholders,Customers should take into account that they are not paying these bonuses, Montague insists:This amount will be funded by the lenders, and at the end of the day borne by the lenders,It’s hard to see much impact from Trump’s tariffs in today’s inflation report, says Heather Long, the Washington Post’s economics columnist.

You can see the 0.2% inflation increase in April.Yes, it's a jump from March, but April was in line with recent trends.Commodity prices up just 0.1% in AprilNew car prices flatUsed car prices down -0.

5%Apparel prices down -0.2%It's hard to see much impact from Trump's… pic.twitter.com/Ny0k3bLvHWCPI inflation was 0.22% MM in April.

Core CPI grew 0.24% MM.Apparel prices (-0.2%) & new car prices (-0.01%) both fell in April.

Core commodity prices grew more slowly than overall CPI, such that relative core commodity prices ticked down slightly,Not much sign of tariffs here pic,twitter,com/Ghqyo2gmT4The drop in US inflation in April suggests that the tariffs are yet to feed through to inflation, says Seema Shah, chief global strategist at Principal Asset Management, adding:Yet, it is questionable whether or not today’s CPI print really moves the needle after the rollercoaster ride of the past month,After all, not only is the April CPI report unlikely to have fully captured the tariff impact post-Liberation Day, but inflation numbers will now be further whipsawed by the US/China trade truce announcement.

An inflation impulse will likely come through during late Q2, but may be partially and quickly eroded if container traffic rapidly resumes in light of the drop in US/China tariffs.The implication is that a clear read on the inflation trend won’t be visible for several months yet.This prolonged inflation uncertainty likely implies a prolonged Fed pause.“Donald Trump will be pleased to see inflation has managed to ease slightly in the US, says Lindsay James, investment strategist at Quilter.But the US is “far from out of the woods” when it comes to inflation, James adds:The first quarter of the year saw businesses ramp up their inventories as they looked to stockpile ahead of ‘Liberation Day’.

As such, price rises are very much delayed, and we can still expect inflation in the US to spike because of these policies.This is, of course, why the Federal Reserve is reluctant to cut interest rates at this point.The reprieve for Chinese goods will likely lead to some more re-stocking before the end of the 90-day period.But while tariffs are much reduced since yesterday, they remain markedly higher than before the 2nd April.The ‘Art of the Deal’ means no-one knows how permanent these tariffs may become, if at all, or if they will be reintroduced in a less harsh form.

However, businesses will become increasingly wary of the shifting sands beneath their feet as these deadlines approach.Given we are already almost at the halfway point of Trump’s 90 day pause for the ‘reciprocal tariffs’ on other nations, we may soon see them building in more margin through price rises to protect themselves from sudden changes in policy making.Tariffs are not the only thing weighing on inflation either, however, and there remain some other underlying factors that aren’t changing as quickly.Food prices in the US remain elevated despite Trump’s campaigning to lower those pressures for consumers.Today’s inflation figure may paint somewhat of a sanguine picture, but scratch lightly under the surface and it is clear the US faces a number of risks.

With economic growth slowing at the same time, the Fed is left in a bind of where to go from here.Risk of policy misstep, therefore, is growing and as such market volatility remains very much on the table.”Newsflash: US inflation was lower than expected last month, despite fears that tariffs will push up costs.On an annual basis, US consumer price inflation fell to 2.3% in April, down from 2.

4% in March, the lowest reading since February 2021,Economists had expected the rate would be unchanged,US CPI inflation 2,6% - the lowest since Feb 2021 pic,twitter.

com/KMXqlOQjn2This might cheer Donald Trump, and bolster his claim that he is easing the price pressures hitting US households.The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) reports that food prices rose by 2.8% over the year, while energy prices were 3.7% cheaper than a year ago.Shelter (housing costs) rose by 4% year-on-year.

During the month, prices rise by 0,2% in April, having dropped by 0,1% in March,The BLS says:Indexes that increased over the month include household furnishings and operations, medical care, motor vehicle insurance, education, and personal care,The indexes for airline fares, used cars and trucks, communication, and apparel were among the major indexes that decreased in April.

The Bank of England’s chief economist, Huw Pill, has underlined his concerns about wage growth, suggesting it might mean rates have to stay higher for longer.Speaking at a conference at the London School of Economics today, he said he was concerned about the upside risks to inflation, which might get stuck above the Bank’s 2% target.Pill said that could, “mean that the response of monetary policy, in order to ensure that we get back to our target within a reasonable cycle, needs to be somewhat more aggressive or more persistent in itself.”Jaguar Land Rover has welcomed the US-UK trade deal announced last week, after reporting its highest annual profit in 10 years.JLR posted a £2