Latest Developments

Europe
BBC Business

Thames Water rescue deal should be rejected - MPs

A cross-party committee of MPs has urged the government to reject a £10bn takeover proposal from Thames Water's creditors. The UK's biggest water company owes roughly £20bn and has been working with creditors and government officials. A report by the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (EFRA) Committee has now said the government should consider placing it into special administration, a form of temporary nationalisation. A Thames Water spokesperson said it needed to be "recapitalised and put on a firm financial footing". Fears that the firm, which serves 16 million customers, could collapse first emerged three years ago. The committee said a takeover plan by a consortium of more than 100 of its creditors did not have "the interests of the public, the company or the environment at heart". The plan was seen as the final realistic option to avoid a special administration regime, after a previous deal with a US private equity giant collapsed. Creditors, who collectively own about £17bn of Thames Water's debt, were previously warned by former environment secretary Emma Reynolds their plan did not go far enough to protect customers or the environment. The new report said Thames Water, alongside other "poor-performing" water companies, was in a "doom loop" of fines for poor performance leaving it with less money to invest in improvements. It warned the company would "likely accrue" more than £900m in penalties over the next five years. The committee said laws needed to change to allow the government to trigger a special administration on performance grounds alone. It also warned the top priority for the bidders, called London & Valley Water, was to "extract immediate value from Thames Water, not steer it to long-term success".

Thames Water rescue deal should be rejected - MPs
Europe
BBC Business

Early Bowie music available to stream for first time

Image source, Alisdair MacDonald/Mirrorpix/Getty ImagesByJosh Korber HoffmanBusiness reporterPublished4 hours agoTen years ago Alec Palao was casually flicking through a collection of old records when he noticed some faint pencil markings that were enough to draw a gasp. "Davie Jones," it read. What he had found was musical gold: five unreleased songs by a young David Bowie, filed away under his birth name. From Friday, those tracks, plus another five unreleased songs that came Palao's way after the initial discovery, will be available to buy and stream. "They are probably the most visceral, raw you'll ever hear the man," said Palao, a music historian and archivist. For the music industry, David Bowie is big business. He entered the mainstream with his 1969 single, Space Oddity, and went on to achieve 11 number one albums. Six of the previously unreleased tracks from the new collection will be available on vinyl, tapping into Bowie's popularity in that format specifically. In 2022, Bowie was named the best-selling vinyl artist of the 21st century by Music Week, ahead of The Beatles. "It's just a fascinating window into London in 1965 and its possibilities," said Palao. In the early sixties, Bowie was a teenager, performing as Davie Jones at London clubs and dreaming of stardom. Many of the tracks he recorded in that period are either little known or lost to time. But his first professional producer, Shel Talmy, had kept a recording from 1965 among his collection of material by other artists he had worked with: The Kinks; The Who; Manfred Mann; The Easybeats. Image source, Alisdair MacDonald/Mirrorpix/Getty ImagesImage caption, In 1965 Bowie made an appearance on the BBC show 'Gad Zooks Its All happening' but caused controversy with his long hair. It was within Talmy's collection that Palao came across the valuable 12-inch acetate. That material and the five other previously unheard tunes, as well as demos and remastered songs, form part of a new, posthumous album called The Shel Talmy Recordings.

Early Bowie music available to stream for first time
Europe
BBC Business

The virtual worlds where robots are trained

Freddo the robot walks across the office and takes a plastic bottled offered by a staff member. Given that a robot recently beat Usain Bolt's 100m sprint record, it's not the most startling achievement. But the speed by which Freddo has been trained to walk, recognise the bottle and grasp it is impressive. It took just a few minutes to develop those skills and upload them to Freddo. His developers say rival systems could take days to attain such skills. I'm at Vsim, a British start-up based in Cambridge. Founders Michelle Lu and Kier Storey hope one day their software will control robots that can navigate and do useful tasks in the home and workplace. "It's a weird situation with robotics because actually the stuff that we find as humans to be incredibly difficult, like gymnastics, you can get robots to do reasonably well. The stuff that humans are really good at, like fine dexterity, is really hard in robots," Storey says. Freddo's skills were honed in a virtual environment, where a task can be performed in a computer simulation millions of times. Once the optimum solution (known as a policy) is found, it can be uploaded and used by the hardware - in this case Freddo. Such virtual simulations are a common way to train robots. Tech giant Nvidia has a system called Isaac Sim which works that way - Lu and Storey both worked on an early version of it. In 2022 they decided to set up Vsim, to build the their own training system environment and other tools. As they were starting from scratch Lu and Storey could optimise the software to exploit the powerful computer chips used in AI, known as graphics processing units or GPUs. "The underlying algorithms that we were using for most of these robotic simulations they hark back to the 1970s and 1980s, but those algorithms are not really brilliant fits for GPUs," Storey says. Within months they realised their system could work much faster than anything they had seen before. "Eighteen months in and we actually have a completely functional, super high-performance simulator," says Lu.

The virtual worlds where robots are trained
North America
CNBC Economy

Friday's CPI inflation report is even more important than usual. Here's what to expect

A report due out Friday morning will be the last piece of the inflation puzzle the Federal Reserve will get before making its decision on interest rates next week. The Bureau of Labor Statistics will release the August consumer price index report at 8:30 a.m. If the Dow Jones consensus is correct, the report will show that costs for all measured goods and services rose 0.4% last month, putting the annual inflation rate at 3.4%. However, excluding food and energy prices, the respective outlooks for core inflation are 0.2% and 2.4%. Combined with Thursday's producer price index data — a measure of wholesale inflation — the CPI will help tell Fed officials what their primary inflation gauge, the personal consumption expenditures price index, will show when it is released at the end of September. The information also is expected to figure heavily into the Federal Open Market Committee's interest rate call next Wednesday, with a percentage point either way possibly meaning the difference between a hold and a hike. "The September FOMC decision ultimately hinges on the CPI data ... since a majority of PCE components are derived from CPI," Nomura economists said in a note. "Currently, we maintain our Fed call of no rate hike at the September FOMC meeting. However, if August CPI data, especially PCE-relevant components, surprises to the upside, that would significantly increase the likelihood of policy firming next week." Following Thursday's PPI release, traders raised the odds for a quarter percentage point increase to more than 73%, according to the CME Group's FedWatch gauge of futures prices. However, expectations have been volatile and highly dependent on data as well as fluctuating energy prices, making the stakes for Friday's release even higher. Fed Chair Kevin Warsh has indicated a reliance on market indicators for direction on monetary policy. "The September Fed decision looked finely balanced at the turn of the month. September's surge in energy prices will likely tip the balance towards a hike when the Fed meets next week," said Bill Adams, chief U.S. economist at Fifth Third Commercial Bank. "A big surprise from the August CPI report's release tomorrow or a last-minute deal with Iran could still influence the decision." Get this delivered to your inbox, and more info about our products and services. Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes. Global Business and Financial News, Stock Quotes, and Market Data and Analysis.

Friday's CPI inflation report is even more important than usual. Here's what to expect
Asia
The Hindu BusinessLine

Rupee poised for subdued start as traders watch oil prices, IPO-linked flows

The Indian rupee is expected to make a quiet start on ​Monday, with traders watching oil prices and foreign portfolio flows ‌for directional cues while holding on to expectations ​that central bank intervention will limit the ⁠currency's weakness. The rupee is expected to open in the 95.90-95.95 band, traders said, marginally weaker than its close at ‌95.8725 on Friday. Oil prices slipped on Monday but held above $100 as Iran and the United States ‌exchanged new threats while investors assessed the recovery ‌in ⁠energy shipments from Saudi Arabia. Brent ⁠prices were down 2 per cent at $101.7 per barrel. Hopes of a diplomatic solution to the Iran war amid the UN meet this week also ​helped cool prices. "Although elevated ‌oil prices may keep the current account under pressure, we think that the improved capital flow dynamics should keep USD/INR within the 95-97 range," Goldman ‌Sachs said in a note. The central bank's capital ​inflow measures, which included sops for raising overseas FX deposits and borrowings, have helped lift ⁠India's FX reserves to about $781 billion — granting the central bank firepower to fund the current account gap ‌and limit rupee depreciation. "Even if the broad USD rebounds, the RBI has demonstrated that it has plenty of tools to cap the upside in USD/INR, bearing in mind that it has not begun to hike policy rates yet," the note added. Expectations of foreign ‌portfolio flows linked to a large domestic IPO could also offer ​support to the rupee on Monday, traders said. The National Stock Exchange of India's $2.3 billion ⁠IPO was fully subscribed on Friday and analysts expect the ⁠demand, especially from foreign institutional investors, to persist on Monday. Regional currencies were mostly range-bound while share markets ‌edged higher as AI's insatiable demand for data buoyed chipmakers. Futures markets, though, pointed to a ​quiet start for equities in Mumbai. Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments. We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of TheHindu Businessline and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.

Rupee poised for subdued start as traders watch oil prices, IPO-linked flows
North America
CNBC Economy

The likelihood of a Fed interest rate hike next week just got a lot higher

A swell of unfriendly factors for inflation likely will push the Federal Reserve to an interest rate hike next week and there's possibly another before the end of the year, judging by market pricing Thursday. Traders pushed chances for a rate increase to 70% in morning action, following a report showing increasing wholesale prices in August and a coincidental jump in U.S. crude oil prices past $100 a barrel, according to the CME Group's FedWatch gauge. They also nudged chances of another increase in December to close to 60% as inflation dynamics are proving stubborn and more likely to generate a central bank reaction. "As the conflict with Iran drags on longer than many expected, inflation pressures are becoming increasingly entrenched, leaving investors in search of a catalyst strong enough to change the inflation narrative," wrote Jeffrey Roach, chief economist at LPL Financial. "At this rate, a hike in rates next week appears likely." The producer price index, a measure of wholesale and pipeline cost pressures, rose 0.4% in August. Though that was in line with forecasts, it followed an upwardly revised 0.1% increase in July, together pushing the annual PPI level to 5.4%, slightly higher than forecast. At the same time, intensified hostilities in the Middle East spooked commodities traders, sending U.S. crude up 4% to just over the $100 barrier. Finally, the European Central Bank announced a quarter percentage point hike and raised its inflation forecast on worries that the Iran war would have deeper economic impacts and inflict a longer-term hit on consumer prices. "More pressure is coming because crude and refined products have kept rising since the August data was collected," said David Russell, global head of market strategy at TradeStation. "The ongoing spike in oil, combined with low jobless claims, make it hard for the Fed to not hike next week." Central bank policymakers will get their final look at inflation data Friday when the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases its consumer price index. The Dow Jones consensus is for a headline annual reading of 3.4%, though the core excluding food and energy is forecast at 2.4%. The Fed, though, focuses on the Commerce Department's personal consumption expenditures price index, which showed core at 3.3% in July and headline at 3.7%. Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh reemphasized recently that the PCE price index is the central bank's official yardstick for inflation. Bank of America senior U.S. economist Stephen Juneau estimated that, accounting for the August PPI reading, core PCE is tracking at a 0.26% monthly rate, which would get rounded up to 0.3%.

The likelihood of a Fed interest rate hike next week just got a lot higher
Europe
BBC Business

Snapchat open to putting time limits on teens, boss tells BBC

The boss of Snapchat-parent Snap Inc says the firm would be "willing to implement" time limits for teens, following a call from Meta for it to take action. Evan Spiegel told the BBC in an interview at the company's California headquarters that setting a maximum amount of time that young users could spend on the app could be "an important step forward for the industry." His comments came as Snap revealed a slew of new features for its upcoming Specs glasses, which it said could connect to Apple iPhone and Mac devices. Meta has been pressuring other social media companies to join it in making platform changes it agreed to as part of a recent multi-billion dollar legal settlement with US states. Instagram and Facebook-parent Meta was facing allegations from Attorneys General for most US states who said the firm deliberately designed its apps to be addictive to young users. It agreed to pay $12.7bn and implement a two-hour daily limit for teen users across its platforms by default, in addition to muted notifications during school hours, blocks at night and other measures. "I think it is an important step forward in the industry in terms of really identifying industry norms, and I think that would be beneficial overall," Spiegel told the BBC. "We've looked really thoughtfully at the terms." As part of Meta's August settlement, the company said it would implement even more stringent time limits and pay an additional $5.3bn if YouTube and TikTok follow suit. It has denied any wrongdoing as part of the deal, which will be paid over a 10-year period. Last month, a Meta spokesperson said it was hopeful that Snap would make similar platform changes as well. Meta, YouTube, TikTok and Snap have all faced a barrage of litigation alleging their apps have helped spawn a youth mental health crisis. Snap has also been accused of facilitating illegal drug sales. When asked about the idea of a default time limit, Spiegel said: "I think that's a really good example of something that that we'd be willing to implement." "That's something we've talked about internally," he said. "I don't have more to share today."

Snapchat open to putting time limits on teens, boss tells BBC
Europe
BBC Business

I sent 200 LinkedIn messages and got a job: How to nail networking

For some, networking comes naturally but for others, the thought of approaching someone they don't know and trying to make a professional connection can fill them with dread. Whether you're looking for your first job, trying to get ahead at work or hoping to change career, building a network can help you find opportunities and make connections. Networking doesn't have to mean working a room at a formal event - it can happen in person over a coffee at work, through a chance conversation or online, through email and social media. Just under half (44%) of Gen Z say not having the right network is the biggest barrier to landing an entry-level role, according to research from LinkedIn, external. Nicole Leverich, chief communications officer at LinkedIn, shares her top tips on how to network and we took the same question to city workers in New York to find out what has worked for them. Everyone can start building their network online and "you'd be surprised how many connections you have once you connect with people you went to school with, former professors, people you met through summer jobs, family and friends," says Leverich. Don't be discouraged if your network is small as "not having a network right now doesn't mean you'll never have a network", she says. Leverich grew up in a small town in Oregon and moved to San Francisco after college without knowing anyone who worked in communications. After getting her first job, she says, "I raised my hand for a lot of the grunt work that other people didn't want to do and I built connections as I went along." If you're thinking about reaching out to someone online, the key is to show you've done your homework, Leverich says. In a message you should "reference something they've posted or establish some common ground". Make sure your request is "clear and specific" and something they can do in less than five minutes. And, most importantly, don't forget to say thank you.

I sent 200 LinkedIn messages and got a job: How to nail networking
Europe
BBC Business

Uncontrolled AI could lead to 'silicon species' rivalling humans, warns Microsoft

The head of Microsoft AI has warned that without adequate safeguards, the development of AI could lead to the emergence of a new "silicon species" which competes with humans. Mustafa Suleyman said rival firm Anthropic is treating AI like it is human, an approach he called "misguided" which could create technology that humanity cannot control. Speaking to the BBC's Today programme, the chief executive said it was "right" for people to be concerned about AI, but there were "very practical things that we can do" to control it. The comments are the latest in a series of stark warnings from the AI industry about the technology's possible dangers. Anthropic has been approached for comment. Speaking to the Today programme on Thursday, Suleyman warned against firms continuing to create AI systems capable of setting their own objectives, earning money and owning assets. That would mean "essentially seeding a new silicon species", he said, which could "no doubt compete with us for resources, no matter how much it cares about humanity and loves us". Suleyman's comments to the BBC follow an essay he published earlier this week, external, in which he questioned Anthropic's approach to training its AI model Claude, despite praising boss Dario Amodei and his team as "intellectually honest people". In it, he criticised Anthropic for teaching its AI to have human-like qualities, a practice known as anthropomorphising, which he said made it seem as though Claude had its own desires, values and sense of self. He also warned tech firms risk creating something "impossible" to control by treating the technology like a human. "They do not feel, experience, or suffer. They do not have innate preferences or underlying motivations. "They are sequence completion engines, internally hollow, designed to follow instructions, and accomplish goals set by humans." The Microsoft boss said greater transparency was needed around how AI systems are trained and evaluated.

Uncontrolled AI could lead to 'silicon species' rivalling humans, warns Microsoft