Tag: firms
How trio of Britain’s biggest power firms are ‘ripping off households by gaming National Grid’s systems’
THREE of the UK’s biggest power firms have ripped off households by over half a billion pounds by gaming National Grid’s systems, it is claimed.
Vitol VPI, Uniper and SSE have been manipulating the electricity market by saying they will power down their generators at peak times, only to then demand a much higher price from the Grid to keep running.
Energy supplies are most under pressure in the evenings, when people cook dinner, turn on lights, and use heating and hot water to bathe.
The Grid sends out requests to power firms for more electricity when its supplies are under pressure and offers a higher payment to generators to step in to the gap.
But some have been announcing they will switch off, often with just a few hours’ notice ahead of the peak times.
Then they earn four times as much by switching back on just hours later to meet the Grid’s anticipated shortfalls.
An investigation by Bloomberg of over 100million market records found these firms have racked up more than £525million in inflated revenues with these tactics.
The grid had to pay £42million on just one cold day last November to traders using their off-on technique.
Simon Francis, of the End Fuel Poverty Coalition, said: “This is absolutely outrageous.
“These traders are part of the reason why Britain’s energy system is completely broken.
“These shadowy practices are causing sky-high energy prices for British consumers.
“It is not just ripping off customers, it is ripping off taxpayers as the Government is having to step in to help with energy bill support.
“Disabled people have been unable to afford to charge their wheelchairs because of rocketing electricity prices — and yet these companies are making bumper profits.”
The energy firms say they comply with the regulations, but energy regulator Ofgem has called the allegations “serious”.
An Ofgem spokesman said: “Our first job is to protect consumers, and all attempts by energy companies to exacerbate tight market conditions, whether intentional or not, are in not their interests.
“We are taking action to introduce a new obligation into electricity generation licences.
“This will prohibit generators from affecting the balancing mechanism in this way for excessive financial gain.”
CASH WOE SWIPES AT DATE APPS
RISING household bills have led to a “cost of loving” crisis as romantics cut back their spending on dating apps.
The volume of dating transactions — which includes spending on apps such as Tinder, Hinge and Bumble — fell by a third in February, a survey of more than 2,000 people by Nationwide found.
Overall spending rose by 10 per cent last month, as consumers had to fork out more on utility bills, mortgage payments and food.
To save cash, nearly a quarter of people have cancelled subscriptions, with outlays on TV streaming, music and meal boxes falling by 6 per cent in February.
Stretched finances mean 38 per cent of consumers had to use credit cards to afford essential items before pay day.
Mark Nalder at Nationwide said: “The number worried about their finances has fallen slightly, but there are people relying on credit.”
IT’S ADIOS MY AMIGO
AMIGO LOANS has said it’s winding down its business and will halt all lending after failing to raise capital from investors.
The sub-prime lender had been looking to raise £15million to pay compensation to over 200,000 customers who had been mis-sold products.
Those customers have now been left in the dark.
The financial regulator said it would have fined Amigo nearly £73million — only that might have affected the payouts customers would receive.
DIY GLOOM SIGN
WICKES is the latest retailer to hint that the DIY boom is starting to falter.
The firm posted a 38.4 per cent fall in pre-tax profits to £40.3million last year after it counted £35million of costs relating to its demerger from Travis Perkins.
However, sales grew by 1.8 per cent to a record £1.6billion.
Sales at the start of this year are “moderately behind” a year ago.
Wickes joins B&Q owner Kingfisher in warning profits would be lower again this year as the surge during lockdown begins to fade.
UK JOBS IN CULL
ONE of the world’s biggest consulting firms, Accenture, is cutting around 19,000 jobs.
The company confirmed UK employees will be affected in its human resources, IT, finance and marketing teams, but did not say how many.
It has around 11,000 workers in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Leeds.
Accenture is shutting offices globally to cut costs by £1.2billion.
Thousands of jobs have already been axed by big tech companies including Meta, Amazon and Google.
THE owner of 32Red, the Kindred Group, has been fined £7.1million and given a warning by the Gambling Commission for doing only “superficial” checks on vulnerable customers — and not doing enough to monitor for money laundering.
FALLS COST LLOYD’S £3BN
LLOYD’S of London, the world’s biggest insurance exchange, has booked £3.1billion of losses on falling government bond values and share prices in the past year.
The insurer revealed it would also have to set aside £1.1billion to cover Ukraine-related claims, lifting its likely war bill to £1.4billion.
The claims, which are related to disruption to supply chains, war damage and sanctions, are still well below the typical cost it would face from US hurricane payouts.
Lloyds suffered a £769million loss for 2022, dropping from a £2.3billion profit the year before.
The insurer is famous for its avant-garde “inside out” headquarters in the City, which has external lifts and stairs. Its roots date back to the 1600s.
CITY firms Cenkos and finnCap have agreed a £43million merger.
They will now have 230 UK staff.
The deal comes four months after a takeover attempt of finnCap by another rival, Panmure Gordon, broke down over price.
Private firms profiting from asylum hotels, BBC learns
Nasdaq Tells Yandex, Other Russian Firms of Plan To Delist Stocks
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UK firms await government help after US bank collapse
Head of America’s SEC: Crypto Firms Should Comply With US Regulations
In an editorial published in The Hill, SEC chair Gary Gensler warns that instead cryptocurrency has many “trusted” intermediaries that are in fact non-compliant with U.S. securities law.
Today, crypto is dominated by a handful of trading, lending, staking, and other financial intermediaries. The investing public is trusting these entities to be responsible with investors’ assets. According to some data, the three largest crypto trading platforms purportedly account for almost three quarters of all trading volume. Crypto entrepreneurs might claim, in their own marketing materials, that they’re transparent and regulated. But make no mistake: Very few, if any, are actually registered with the SEC and fully compliant with the federal securities laws.
The lack of compliance puts investors’ hard-earned assets at risk. Investors lack fundamental disclosures about the crypto assets themselves and the firms who execute their trades and custody their assets: What are firms doing with customer assets? How are they funding their promised returns? Are they putting their hands in investors’ pockets? When you buy or sell a token, are you trading against the house? What are the rules to protect against manipulation and fraud? Without disclosure and other investor protections, we simply don’t know.
In essence, these firms are saying, “trust us.” What’s more, when firms go bankrupt (as many have of late), they turn to bankruptcy courts to sort out their mess.
“[B]ased upon how crypto platforms generally operate, investment advisers cannot rely on them today as qualified custodians,” the editorial concludes. Rather than comply with the relevant laws, “it has felt like some have sought a stamp of approval for noncompliant activity, rather than changing a fundamentally non-compliant business model rife with conflicts.”
Of course, another tool in our toolbox is rooting out noncompliance through investigations and enforcement actions. The SEC has successfully brought or settled more than 100 cases against crypto intermediaries and token issuers, including some who operated Ponzi or pyramid schemes, engaged in unlawful touting, or committed other forms of fraud….
Some have said that we should let the innovation flourish or risk it going overseas. But forsaking investor protection puts real people’s life savings at risk.
“It’s a basic bargain in finance: If you want to raise money from the public, disclose certain facts and figures,” Gensler told Politico this week. Their article notes “crypto giants are threatening to move their businesses across the Atlantic” from America to Europe, but with Gensler responding “We lose more if investors get harmed here.”
Crypto lobbyists have framed Gensler’s push to force their industry to comply with 90-year-old securities laws as a war against financial innovation. Whatever changes brought by crypto markets will pale compared to what could come as brokerages and financial data aggregators move to incorporate artificial intelligence into their offerings, Gensler said.
“The much more transformative technology right now of our times is predictive data analytics and everything underlying artificial intelligence,” he said, adding that he looked forward to working with lawmakers on how those tools could be regulated.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
VC firms pull funds out of Silicon Valley Bank, CEO asks clients to stay calm – report
Venture firms are advising portfolio companies to move money out of SVB
VCs are advising startups to generally keep no more than $250,000 in SVB checking accounts.
Venture firms are advising portfolio companies to move money out of SVB by Natasha Mascarenhas originally published on TechCrunch
UK microchip firms ask government for hundreds of millions
Netflix Fights Attempt To Make Streaming Firms Pay For ISP Network Upgrades
Peters cited Nielsen data showing that “Netflix accounts for under 10 percent of total TV time” in the US and UK while “traditional local broadcasters account for over half of all TV time.” Live sports account for much of that. “As broadcasters continue the shift away from linear to streaming, they will start to generate significant amounts of Internet traffic too — even more than streamers today based on the current scope and scale of their audiences,” Peters said. “Broadband customers, who drive this increased usage, already pay for the development of the network through their subscription fees. Requiring entertainment companies — both streamers and broadcasters — to pay more on top would mean ISPs effectively charging twice for the same infrastructure.” Telcos that receive new payments wouldn’t be expected to lower the prices charged to home Internet users, Peters said. “As the consumer group BEUC has pointed out, there is no suggestion these levies would be passed onto consumers in the form of ‘lower prices or better infrastructure,'” he said.
Peters said Netflix’s “operating margins are significantly lower than either British Telecom or Deutsche Telekom. So we could just as easily argue that network operators should compensate entertainment companies for the cost of our content — exactly as happened under the old pay-TV model.” While telcos claim companies like Netflix don’t pay their “fair share,” Peters pointed out that Netflix has spent a lot building its own network that reduces the amount of data sent over traditional telecom networks. “We’ve spent over $1 billion on Open Connect, our own content delivery network, which we offer for free to ISPs,” he said. “This includes 18,000 servers with Netflix content distributed across 6,000 locations and 175 countries. So when our members press play, instead of the film or TV show being streamed from halfway around the world, it’s streamed from around the corner — increasing efficiency for operators while also ensuring a high-quality, no-lag experience for consumers.” Peters also touted Netflix’s encoding technology that cut bit rates in half between 2015 and 2020. While Internet traffic has increased about 30 percent a year, “ISPs have managed this increased consumer usage efficiently while their costs have remained stable,” Peters said. “Regulators have highlighted this, too, calling out that infrastructure costs are not sensitive to traffic and that growing consumption will be offset by efficiency gains.”
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