South West Water owner Pennon has bought a rival utility company in a £380m deal despite a backlash over its sewage spills.
The purchase of Sumisho Osaka Gas Water UK, the holding company of Sutton and East Surrey Water, comes despite campaigners calling for investment to reduce pollution incidents.
5 things to start your day
1) Britain to borrow record £206bn from private investors this year as election looms | Expensive election pledges risk unnerving investors and driving up debt costs
2) China is winning the ‘Sino-Japanese car war’ in Southeast Asia | Thailand’s embrace of the new Chinese order is a warning for Western carmakers
3) Wall Street watchdog Twitter hacked by Bitcoin scammers | The fake message will raise further questions about the operations of the social media platform under owner Elon Musk
4) AI race a free for all, warns veteran investor Terry Smith | Fundsmith founder predicts no single company will dominate artificial intelligence market
5) Duolingo replaces 10pc of translators with AI | Cuts show how AI tools threaten to replace jobs traditionally done by human workers
What happened overnight
Japanese stocks hit a near 34-year high while other Asian equities meandered around one-month lows and bond markets traded cautiously ahead of US inflation data due this week.
Japan’s Nikkei – which had its best year for a decade in 2023 – climbed 2pc to break above 34,000 for the first time since 1990.
Exporters led the charge, helped by a softening yen to end at 34,441.72, while the broader Topix index gained 1.3pc to 2,444.48, its highest since 1990.
The rally contrasts with China, where the blue chip CSI300 slid to a five-year low.
Bitcoin steadied after spiking when an unauthorised post from the US Securities and Exchange Commission’s X account said it had approved bitcoin exchange-traded funds.
The S&P 500 and Dow lost ground and closed lower on Tuesday, as investors assessed the timing and size of any Federal Reserve interest rate cuts in 2024 ahead of inflation data this week.
Expectations the Fed could begin cutting rates as soon as March have been slowly decreasing.
The Dow Jones Industrial Average of 30 leading American companies fell 0.42pc, closing at 37,525.16. The S&P 500 lost 0.15pc, closing at 4,756.50, while the Nasdaq Composite index gained 0.09pc, closing at 14,857.71.
The benchmark 10-year yield on US Treasury bonds was up slightly at 4.017pc.