Thursday newspaper round-up: Water companies, Walgreens, Deutsche Bank

Water companies have apologised for repeated sewage spills and pledged to invest £10bn this decade in an attempt to quell public anger over pollution in seas and rivers. The companies will triple their existing investment plans to plough funds into the biggest modernisation of sewers “since the Victorian era” to reduce spills of overflowing sewage into England’s waterways. – Guardian

San Francisco has reached a $230m settlement with Walgreens over the corporation’s role in the city’s unprecedented opioid crisis. The settlement is the largest ever awarded to a local government amid years of continuing, nationwide opioid-centered litigation, according to San Francisco’s city attorney. – Guardian

Barclays is planning to hire 200 new traders in Paris in the latest blow to the City of London in the wake of Brexit. The British lender said it expects to increase its headcount in the French capital by about two-thirds over the next two to three years as it increasingly becomes Europe’s main trading hub. – Telegraph

The former chief executive of London Capital & Finance, the collapsed investment company, received a suspended jail sentence after he admitted concealing £95,000 from investigators that was used to fund his luxury lifestyle. A judge at Southwark crown court in London sentenced Michael Thomson, 50, to ten-months in jail, suspended for two years, yesterday after he was found to have breached a restraint order imposed on his finances. – The Times

Deutsche Bank has agreed to pay $75 million to settle a lawsuit which accused it of helping to facilitate sex trafficking by the paedophile and financier Jeffrey Epstein, according to lawyers for the plaintiffs. Alleged victims of Epstein, led by a woman listed anonymously as Jane Doe, launched legal action against the investment bank last November. – The Times