Bunzl's Nisbets takeover cleared by Irish regulator, ICG profits more than double

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Bunzl’s £339m takeover of UK-based catering equipment provider Nisbets has been cleared by Ireland’s competition regulator.

The distribution giant in February announced plans to take 80% stake in Nisbets, subject to clearance in Britain and Ireland.

Elsewhere, investment firm Intermediate Capital Group (ICG) more than doubled profits in the year ended 31 March as it reported a huge increase in performance fee income while assets under management rose by nearly a quarter.

Group profit before tax totalled £258.1m, up 132% on the year before. Management fee income increased 5% to £505.4m, topping half a billion pounds for the first time, with performance fee income soaring 276% to £73.7m. Assets under management rose 23% to $98.4bn.

Newspaper round-up

Ofwat is poised to refuse most water companies’ requests to ratchet up consumer bills, with some getting as little as half of what they have asked for, the Guardian has learned. The decision from the water watchdog for England and Wales, Ofwat, has been formally delayed until 11 July because of the general election. Its verdict, known as a draft determination, comes amid a growing crisis in the water sector. – Guardian

A young social media star with cerebral palsy says Facebook refused to take action after scammers used her content to set up a fake account and make money from her fans. Grace Wolstenholme, 20, who has 1.3m followers on TikTok, says she has lost income from not posting videos after she was advised by the police to stop. Content she put on TikTok and on Instagram was being stolen and posted on Facebook by someone pretending to be her. – Guardian

High interest rates are set to cost British businesses an extra £41.7bn by the end of the decade as cheap loans expire and are replaced with more expensive debt. Businesses’ debt servicing costs are to rise by an average of £4.7bn a year after the Bank of England ended the era of ultra-low rates and pushed borrowing costs to a 17-year high, according to consultancy Baringa. It threatens to push up inflation as companies are put under increasing pressure to raise prices to cover some of the increase in costs, economist and partner Nick Forrest said – as well as raising the prospect that some companies will simply collapse. – Telegraph

Deutsche Bank is poised to wind down Numis’ US operations after slashing the estimated value of the broker following a takeover deal. The German lender will axe US subsidiary Numis Securities and merge most staff into its own head office in New York. Numis’ US office employs around 12 people and half of them will move over to Deutsche, with the remainder to be offered jobs elsewhere in the bank. – Telegraph

A deputy governor of the Bank of England has hit back at critics, including a former governor, who have accused it of failing to control inflation. Ben Broadbent, who is leaving the Bank next month after 13 years with the institution, saidclaims that its ratesetting monetary policy committee had failed to foresee surging inflation over the past three years because its members shared similar backgrounds were “absolute tripe”. – The Times