Wessex Water bosses handed £50,000 in extra pay despite Labour government’s bonus ban

The bosses of Wessex Water received £50,000 in previously undisclosed extra pay from a parent company, in the same year that the utility was banned from paying bonuses, the Guardian can reveal.Chief executive Ruth Jefferson and chief financial officer Andy Pymer were paid £24,000 and £27,000 respectively in the year to June 2025, according to a spokesperson for Wessex Water’s owner, the Malaysian YTL group.The payments came from Wessex Water Ltd, which is the parent company of Wessex Water Services Ltd, the regulated water supplier for 2.9 million customers in south-west England. YTL said the payments were not bonuses

US hiring held firm in December capping weakest year of growth since pandemic

Hiring held firm in the US last month, official data showed, amid uncertainty over the strength and direction of the world’s largest economy.Employers added 50,000 jobs to the US labor force last month, capping the weakest year of growth since the pandemic, according to data released from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics on Friday.The closely watched reading was slightly shy of the approximately 73,000 jobs economists expected to be added in the US economy in December.Previous readings for October and November were also revised lower, with the BLS now estimating that the US added 76,000 fewer jobs during those two months. In October, during the longest US government shutdown in history, the US economy shed 173,000 jobs

Glencore and Rio Tinto are at it again – and it seems the markets smell action

Here we go again. A combination of Rio Tinto and Glencore has been talked about for years and the duo held aborted negotiations at the end of 2024. With the global mining industry in deal-making mode – frenzies come along every 15 years or so – the idea of RioGlen or GlenTinto was due another whirl. On Friday, the two FTSE 100 companies said they were in “preliminary discussions” about a “possible combination of some or all of their businesses”. A full-blown tie-up would be worth about $260bn (£120bn), including debt

US economy added fewer jobs than forecast in December, but January interest rate cut very unlikely – as it happened

Newsflash: The US economy added fewer jobs than expected last month.America’s non-farm payroll rose by 50,000 in December, missing forecasts of a 60,000 rise.Employment continued to trend up in food services and drinking places, health care, and social assistance, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, while retail trade lost jobs.That shows a hiring slowdown, compared with the previous month; the BLS now estimates that 56,000 jobs were created in November, 8,000 fewer than its first estimate of 64,000.Time to wrap up!Hiring held firm in the US last month, official data showed, amid uncertainty over the strength and direction of the world’s largest economy

High costs, falling returns: what could go wrong for Trump’s Venezuela oil gamble?

Donald Trump has laid claim to billions of dollars’ worth of Venezuelan crude this week, which at a stroke has handed the world’s biggest consumer of oil up to 50m barrels – but his ambitions are far greater.The White House said Venezuela would be “turning over” the nearly $3bn (£2.3bn) of crude stranded in tankers and storage facilities before it is sold on the international market and after that the US plans to control all the country’s oil sales “indefinitely”.For the Trump administration, the seizure is the first move in taking control of Venezuela’s vast crude reserves, estimated to represent almost a fifth of the proven reserves on Earth, in a push to cut the oil price to $50 a barrel.But experts have been quick to point out that the crude cargo grab could be the last easy win for the president, with no quick or cheap fix to reignite the country’s oil production

Charity watchdog opens inquiry into City & Guilds’ sale of business arm

The Charity Commission has opened a statutory inquiry into City & Guilds’ sale of its qualification awards business to a private company last year.The announcement has been made after the Guardian revealed last month how City & Guilds bosses were handed million-pound bonuses after the charity privatised its business arm.The payments – which are understood to include a £1.7m award for the chief executive, Kirstie Donnelly, and £1.2m to the finance director, Abid Ismail – emerged after reports of how the privatised City & Guilds business has also embarked on a £22m cost-cutting drive and is shrinking its UK workforce after being sold by its charity owner to PeopleCert, an international certification company