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Tuesday newspaper round-up: Ofwat, Facebook, Deutsche Bank

(Sharecast News) - 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

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(Sharecast News) - 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. As of 4 February, the plan had received more than 4,700 claims from the Palisades and Eaton fires, almost half of which were for "total losses". - Guardian
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(Sharecast News) - 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
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(Sharecast News) - 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. The Wall Street Journal first reported the proposed bid. - Guardian
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(Sharecast News) - 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

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