Business
Thames Water unveil £20.5 billion action plan to revive struggling water firm

The creditors of Thames Water have set out plans on how they would deliver £20.5 billion of investment to turn around the troubled supplier’s performance as they look to secure a rescue of the firm.
The supplier’s main creditors – led by a team of 15 investors called the London & Valley Water consortium – have pledged to “fix the foundations” of Thames Water with the mammoth spending proposal put forward to regulator Ofwat.
They are promising an increased focus on improving Thames Water’s poor pollution performance and record on leaks, with targets to cut sewage spills by at least 135 a year.
Thames Water – the UK’s biggest water supplier with around 16 million customers – is on the brink of nationalisation as it struggles under a mountain of debts.
The creditors are looking to secure backing for their plans to avoid Thames Water being put into a temporary special administration regime (SAR), which would effectively wipe out their investments.
Their spending proposals would see them work within the £20.5 billion investment allowance set by Ofwat in its final determination on Thames Water spending and bill rises.
Household bills would not rise by more than the regulator has already approved over the next five years, the group stressed.
But it said the plans would need “billions of pounds of new funding” from the consortium.
It remains in talks over a rescue deal of the supplier that would see them pump in new cash, but ask for leniency in how it is regulated.
The creditors hope to put forward updated plans on a funding deal and debt overhaul for Thames Water within the next couple of weeks.
Mike McTighe, chairman designate of the London & Valley Water consortium, said: “Over the next 10 years the investment we will channel into Thames Water’s network will make it one of the biggest infrastructure projects in the country.
“Our core focus will be on improving performance for customers, maintaining the highest standards of drinking water, reducing pollution and overcoming the many other challenges Thames Water faces.
“This turnaround has the opportunity to transform essential services for 16 million customers, clean up our waterways and rebuild public trust.”
The creditors are the bondholders who now effectively own Thames Water after the High Court approved a financial restructuring earlier this year through a loan of up to £3 billion to ensure it can keep running until the summer of 2026.
The firms involved – which include US and UK investment firms such as Aberdeen, Elliott Management and BlackRock – submitted an initial financial plan in June to overhaul £17 billion of Thames Water’s debts, including investing another £3 billion in new equity and a further £2 billion of funding.
But they also asked for leniency on performance targets and compliance, warning that a “regulatory reset” was needed for the utility, or its performance would likely worsen.
The latest investment plans would see the group commit to spending £9.4 billion on sewage and water assets over the next five year, up 45 per cent on current levels.
Of this, £3.9 billion would be spent on upgrading the worst performing sewage treatment sites, £1.2 billion on helping deliver high-quality drinking water and £2.7 billion on stopping sewage spill incidents.
Longer term proposals would see 1,000km of water mains replaced over the coming decade, with £545 million targeted to replace around 370km by 2030.
Thames Water’s current management has previously said it would need over £24 billion of investment allowance for the next five years and to increase bills by more than Ofwat had agreed.
The government appointed insolvency specialists FTI Consulting last month to step up contingency planning in case the supplier collapses.
A possible rescue deal with US private equity giant KKR collapsed in May, but the government has stressed its preference is for a “market-based solution” rather than a costly temporary nationalisation.
Business
Trade talks about ‘hard yards’ rather than photo opportunities, says Starmer

Whisky negotiations with the US are about “the hard yards” rather than “one-off photo opportunities”, the Prime Minister has said in a rebuke to First Minister John Swinney.
Mr Swinney has made securing a deal to cut whisky tariffs with the US a key part of his premiership in recent months, meeting President Donald Trump on a number of occasions this year in the hopes of reducing the levies.
The First Minister’s involvement in the talks comes despite international trade being a reserved issue, with the UK Government in the lead.
Speaking to a group of Scottish journalists in Downing Street on Monday, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said: “Negotiations and getting the trade deals you want… is about the hard yards of negotiation and that’s what we’ve been up to.
“That’s what we’ve delivered in relation to the India deal and, as you can imagine, we’re continuing those negotiations and hard yards with the US, in particular in relation to whisky.”
He added: “The hard yards is what matters, creating relationships, having the conversations, and these things take time.
“They’re not a one-off photo opportunity.”
Both the Scottish and UK governments are “trying to achieve the same thing” on whisky, the Prime Minister said.
“In the end, I went to Scotland two or three days after the election to say I want to deliver for Scotland above all else and therefore, that’s why we continue these negotiations and discussions with the US and we will continue to do so.”
The First Minister has met with President Trump twice during a visit to his golf courses in the summer, at the State Visit in September and in a private audience at the White House in Washington DC, each time raising the plight of the industry, which claims to be losing £4 million per week due to the US-imposed tariffs.
Speaking to the PA news agency earlier this month, the First Minister said he would like to be involved in the trade talks between the two sides.
“I’ve not been privy to the trade talks,” he said ahead of the SNP’s conference in Aberdeen.
“I would like to be, because I think I’ve actually been quite helpful in all of this.
“It’s clear to me earlier on this year that whisky was not really featuring in the trade talks at all, it was not there as a principal negotiating priority for the UK Government.
“Well, I had to make sure it was, because it really matters to Scotland.”
A spokeswoman for the Scottish Government said: “The First Minister is focussed on securing a zero tariff deal for Scotch whisky, and has raised this matter on a number of occasions with key decision makers, including the President of the United States.
“Further trade negotiations are for the UK Government to take forward.”
Business
What’s the best way to detect and destroy drones?

Adrienne MurrayTechnology reporter

In the northern Danish city of Aalborg, the firm MyDefence makes equipment that jams and repels drones.
“We’ve had a big surge of interest,” says chief executive, Dan Hermansen.
He says that up until early October his company was mainly dealing with defence firms, but now it has “completely shifted”.
The small, box-like kit made by MyDefence is mostly used by the military of Nato countries and Ukraine.
However lately demand has grown from civilian customers.
“It’s coming from critical infrastructure,” he adds, “from big companies, looking to protect their own assets”.
The device detects communication between the drone and its pilot, then breaks that connection, explains Mr Hermansen, by emitting a powerful radio signal on the same frequency.
Rather than falling out of the sky, the drone is pushed away and has a controlled landing. If it tries to reconnect to a GPS signal, that can be blocked too, he adds.
Mr Hermansen reckons that radio frequency jamming works against 80 to 90% of the drones that are flown.

While forcing an unwanted drone to crash land is a good result, it’s essential to be able to detect it first.
“The first part is really about identification. And the second part is an interceptor system,” explains Kasper Hallenborg, director of The Maersk Mc-Kinney Moller Institute at University of Southern Denmark.
Identifying a drone is not so easy, points out Andreas Graae, the head of research at the Institute of Military Technology at the Danish Defence Academy.
“[Drones] can be very small or really big, and are often produced from materials like plastic or fabrics that are very hard to detect on a traditional radar,” he says.
A suite of technologies are under constant development, to help find drones.
That includes acoustic sensors that listen for the drone’s buzzing; advanced optical cameras, with very high resolution; and increasingly sophisticated tactical radars, which work over longer ranges and can even differentiate between a drone or a bird.
Once detected, a drone needs to be disabled. Electronic jamming, similar to that used by MyDefence has leapt forward, thanks in large part to the war in Ukraine.
“[Ukraine’s] frontlines are totally jammed,” Mr Graae says, which means that drone controllers lose control of their machines.
So, Russia and Urkaine have adapted by using drones controlled by fibre optic cables, or using drones that can navigate autonomously, or fly along pre-programmed routes.
Such drones need to be intercepted or shot down and plenty of firms are working on novel ways to do that.
Among them is Swedish start-up, Nordic Air Defence. It is developing a low-cost interceptor designed to strike the targeted drone, forcing it to crash.
“It’s missile shaped, so travels incredibly fast,” he adds. “It’s incredibly easy to manufacture. It is basically 3D printed,” says Jens Holzapfel, the company’s business director.

Cost is a criticial factor in countering drones.
Last month, Nato Secretary-General Mark Rutte said: “It’s unacceptable to shoot down drones costing one or two thousand dollars with missiles that may cost half a million or even a million dollars.”
That’s been a big lesson from Ukraine, says Mr Graae. “It’s become a competition of how cheap you can actually make a drone attack, and how expensive it is to defend against.”
“As hostile drones become cheaper, it puts pressure on the defender to manufacture low cost products,” agrees Mr Holzapfel.
Low-cost drones are increasingly a security issue away from the frontlines of Ukraine.
Poland and Romania had their airspace breached by Russian drones; while separate drone incidents were reported, in Norway, Sweden, Lithuania, Romania and most recently at Germany’s Munich airport.
In Denmark tensions have also run high after a string of mysterious sightings at airports and military installations around the country.
That spurred the defence ministry to deploy “several capacities” that can detect, track and jam drones; and last week Sweden announced plans to invest more than $365m (£275m) in anti-drone systems, including measures to jam and shoot them down, as well as the deployment of hunter drones.
Mr Holzapfel at Nordic Air Defence currently works with Sweden and its European allies. As well as the military, clients are from law enforcement agencies and security companies.
But he also sees civilian sectors like shipping and the oil and offshore industries as potential markets.

In a civilian setting. simply shooting down a drone might be too risky.
“It could be rather dangerous,” says Kasper Hallenborg, pointing to the falling parts and potentially flammable fuel.
“We saw the impact in Poland,” he continues. “That was just drone fragments, which more or less removed the roof of a house.”
Early detection would help, says Mr Hallenborg: “Then you can probably take it down somewhere it’s more safe to do so.”
At short ranges, shooting out nets to tangle up the drone is another method and cheap lasers are also being developed.
There are also safer, so-called soft-kill options, including hacking. “That’s a more secure way to neutralize the drone, because then you can actually control the landing,” says Mr Graae.
Crucially, a traffic management system is urgently needed, suggests Mr Hallenborg, involving electronic license plates for each drone device and way for users to register the flight in advance.
“Then we can quickly identify which drones are allowed to be there and those that aren’t,” says Mr Hallenborg.
“The [Danish] police have been overloaded with people telling them about what they’ve seen in the sky. A lot of these drones are probably there with a [legitimate] purpose,” he says.
Business
Disney+ cancellations soar after Jimmy Kimmel suspension

Danielle KayeBusiness reporter

Disney+ and Hulu cancellations rates doubled in September after TV host Jimmy Kimmel was briefly taken off air, suggesting the move may have hurt the entertainment giant financially.
Data from analytics firm Antenna shows Disney+’s so-called churn rate – the percentage of subscribers who cancel each month – jumped from a 4% average to 8%, which equates to about three million cancellations, while Hulu’s rose to 10% or more than 4 million.
Disney suspended Kimmel after comments he made about the shooting of Charlie Kirk, following pressure from a federal regulator. The decision sparked free speech debates.
ABC, which airs Jimmy Kimmel Live, reinstated him within a week after a backlash.
Disney, which owns ABC, decided on 17 September to take the comedian off air, two days after Kimmel had said, during one of his shows, the “Maga gang” was “desperately trying to characterise this kid who murdered Charlie Kirk as anything other than one of them” and of trying to “score political points from it”.
The abrupt suspension came hours after Brendan Carr, chair of broadcast regulator, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), threatened to revoke ABC’s broadcast licence.
The move was met with protests in California and lambasted by the writers and actors guilds, lawmakers and the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
Critics and First Amendment advocates had railed against ABC’s decision as censorship and a violation of free speech. They also called for economic pressure on Disney, urging people to boycott the company’s services.
Hundreds of celebrities and Hollywood creatives signed a letter backing Kimmel, who was later reinstated.

The new data from Antenna, released on Monday, offers the first indication that Disney may have taken a hit from the blow-back.
Disney+ and Hulu lost millions more subscribers in September compared to recent months, while Netflix saw its churn rate hold steady at 2%.
But it is not clear whether Kimmel’s suspension was the only factor driving the surge in cancellations.
Disney’s move to suspend Kimmel coincided with its announcement of previously planned increases to subscription prices, as the company faces pressure to boost its profit from streaming services.
Despite the rise in cancellation rates, both Disney+ and Hulu saw an uptick in new sign-ups in September, offsetting some of the loss, according to Antenna.
Disney declined to comment and Hulu is yet to respond. However, Disney noted discrepancies between Antenna’s data and its internal figures.
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