California’s home-insurance safety net does not have enough money to pay all of the claims from damage caused by the Los Angeles wildfires and has asked private insurers to contribute $1bn toward those claims. All private insurers operating in California are required to contribute to the Fair plan, a plan of last resort established so all Californians would have access to fire insurance. More than 450,000 California homeowners got their insurance through the Fair plan in 2024 – more than double the number in 2020.
The British economy is on course to expand by 1. 5% this year after the budget gave a boost to public spending but could be blown off course if Donald Trump goes ahead with threatened tariffs, a leading economic thinktank has warned. In a boost to Rachel Reeves after a bruising month of negative economic figures, the National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR) upped its annual growth prediction from 1. 2% to 1. 5%. – Guardian.
Elon Musk escalated his feud with OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman on Monday. The billionaire is leading a consortium of investors that announced it had submitted a bid of $97. 4bn for “all assets” of the artificial intelligence company to OpenAI’s board of directors. The startup, which operates ChatGPT, has been working to restructure itself away from its original non-profit status. OpenAI also operates a for-profit subsidiary, and Musk’s unsolicited offer could complicate the company’s plans.
An increasingly complex tax system is burdening the government and businesses with hundreds of millions of pounds more in administration costs, Whitehall’s spending watchdog has warned. The report by the National Audit Office (NAO) also said “poor levels of service” meant some taxpayers and their representatives were “finding it more difficult to deal with their tax matters and are losing trust in HM Revenue & Customs [HMRC]”. – Guardian.
Abu Dhabi based carrier Etihad is planning to float a stake of up to 20% on the Abu Dhabi Stock Exchange. Sources indicate that it could command a valuation of $5bn (£4bn). It would be the second such transaction for its boss, Antonoaldo Neves. In 2017, the former McKinsey partner floated Azul, Brazil's third-largest airline, on the New York Stock Exchange. For Neves, any airline that aspires to be "relevant" needs to tap into different sources of capital. Its goal is to fly 170 jets by 2030, up from 93 at present.
The gambling regulator has accidentally handed over more than 4,000 sensitive documents to lawyers acting for the media tycoon Richard Desmond, in an “unprecedented” blunder during its legal battle over the £6. 4bn national lottery contract, the Guardian understands. Northern & Shell (N&S), the investment group owned by Desmond, is suing the Gambling Commission for £200m in damages over its handling of the lottery licence award process. – Guardian.
The appointment of the former boss of Amazon UK to lead the competition watchdog poses a threat to its independence and pledge to hold big tech to account, according to a group including tech companies and the former business secretary Vince Cable. The group – which includes the News Media Association, the Firefox developer Mozilla, the consumer group Which? and the Future of Technology Institute – has written to the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, to raise concerns about the appointment of Doug Gurr as the interim chair of the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA).
Thames Water may need as much as £10bn in debt and equity investment to repair its finances, according to a representative of creditors hoping to lend the struggling utility another £3bn. London’s high court heard evidence on Tuesday that suggested the UK’s largest water company may need significantly more resources than the roughly £6. 3bn it has previously indicated. – Guardian.
The UK’s science minister, Chris Bryant, has described AstraZeneca’s decision to scrap plans for a £450m expansion of its vaccine plant in Merseyside as “deeply disappointing”. The pharmaceutical company announced on Friday that it was axing the planned expansion of its factory in the Liverpool suburb of Speke, citing factors “including the timing and reduction of the final offer compared to the previous government’s proposal”. – Guardian.
Hundreds of thousands of British workers are on zero-hours contracts despite being with the same employer for years, according to analysis from the TUC. The majority of zero-hours contract workers have been with their employer for more than 12 months, while one in eight have not been granted regular employment rights after more than a decade working in the same place, the organisation said. – Guardian.
Apple slightly beat analysts’ expectations in its first-quarter earnings for fiscal year 2025 on Thursday. The iPhone-maker’s revenue rose by 4%, coming in at $124. 30bn, barely above estimates of $124. 12bn. Earnings per share were $2. 40, just ahead of analysts’ expectations of $2. 35. Shares rose more than 8% in extended trading after CEO Tim Cook indicated in an earnings call on Thursday that Apple is on the trajectory for revenue growth next quarter. – Guardian.
The architect of a ban on newspaper takeovers by foreign states has demanded that an Abu Dhabi fund be forced to sell The Telegraph by Easter. Baroness Stowell, the Conservative chairman of the Lords communications and digital committee, said the Government should impose an ultimatum on RedBird IMI. It should be backed by the threat of regulatory action, she said, to strip the fund of control of what has been dubbed “the newspaper auction from hell”. – Telegraph.
Rachel Reeves is unveiling plans to create “Europe’s Silicon Valley” between Oxford and Cambridge as she stakes the government’s success on kickstarting economic growth and putting more pounds in people’s pockets. The chancellor will announce a blueprint to improve infrastructure across the region that will add up to £78bn to the UK economy within a decade, according to industry experts, and put it at the forefront of science and technological advances.
The UK has given more than £12. 5bn from energy bills to fossil fuel power plants in the past decade through a government scheme to keep the lights on during winter, according to new analysis. The research found that, since 2015, the government has offered contracts worth £20bn through a “capacity market” to create a backup reserve of generators on standby, of which about 60% were fossil fuel power plants and a quarter were energy storage and power cable projects.
The government is under growing pressure to get momentum back into the economy amid warnings that businesses plan to cut jobs and raise prices, while millions of families believe their finances will worsen this year. Before a major speech this week by the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, designed to restate Labour’s commitment to improving the economy, the CBI said private sector firms were urgently assessing their budgets to offset measures announced in last October’s budget.
The UK government has reportedly approached multiple restructuring advisers for the role of special administrator for Thames Water if the troubled utility falls into bankruptcy. Teneo, Interpath and EY are among the companies contacted by the government as it prepares contingency plans should Britain’s largest water company be forced into nationalisation, the Financial Times reported, citing people familiar with the process. – Guardian.
The government’s statistics agency is spending £8m to hire an army of low-paid temporary workers amid efforts to fix its “virtually unusable” data on unemployment and wages in Britain. Under pressure over the quality of its data, the Office for National Statistics last month agreed the multimillion-pound deal with the employment agency Randstad to recruit interviewers to help increase the reliability of its labour force survey (LFS). – Guardian.
Parliament’s spending watchdog has accused HM Revenue & Customs of deliberately running down its phone services to force people to go online after finding the average call waiting time has passed 23 minutes – almost double the figure of two years earlier. With people across the country working to finish their self-assessment return before the 31 January deadline, the public accounts committee (PAC) said it was “concerned that HMRC has degraded its own phone services” in the hope that taxpayers choose other ways to get in touch.
Donald Trump signed a memorandum on inflation and multiple orders aimed at lowering energy prices, but the incoming president’s advisers offered few details on the policies, raising serious questions about whether the new administration will be able to address one of Americans’ most pressing concerns. During a press call on Monday morning, incoming White House advisers pledged that Trump would pursue an “all of government approach to bringing down costs for American citizens” but they declined to outline concrete steps that the administration would pursue to lower prices.
TikTok said on Sunday that it was restoring services in the US after Donald Trump pledged earlier in the day to give the video app a reprieve on its US ban. Trump wrote on Truth Social that after taking office on Monday he would sign an executive order allowing the Chinese-owned video app additional time to find a buyer before facing a total shutdown, and proposing that the US or an American firm take a 50% ownership stake. – Guardian.