Friday newspaper round-up: Water companies, Amazon, Elon Musk
By Michele Maatouk
Date: Friday 06 Jun 2025
(Sharecast News) - Bonuses for 10 water company executives in England, including the boss of Thames Water, will be banned with immediate effect over serious sewage pollution, as part of new powers brought in by the Labour government. The top executives of six water companies who have overseen the most serious pollution events will not receive performance rewards this year, the environment said. - Guardian
Amazon has promised to do a better job policing fake reviews and to crack down on sellers using them to boost product ratings after an investigation by the UK competition watchdog. Ending the scourge of fake reviews is a priority for the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) due to the influence they have over consumers. About 90% of UK shoppers rely on reviews, with an estimated £23bn a year of spending influenced by crowd-sourced information. Since April, fake reviews have been explicitly banned. - Guardian
Nearly one in 10 cars sold in Britain are now Chinese-made as drivers turn away from Tesla and embrace newer manufacturers such as BYD. Chinese-owned brands had a 9.4pc share of Britain's new car market last month, according to the Society for Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), up from 7.7pc in April. The surge saw BYD's sales alone quintuple to 3,025 cars - about 1,000 more than US rival Tesla sold. - Telegraph
Sir Richard Branson faces a fight to fulfil his dream of operating trains through the Channel Tunnel after the rail regulator concluded there was room for just one new entrant. The ruling means Sir Richard must convince the Office of Rail and Road (ORR) that he is better placed to provide competition to Eurostar than three rival bidders. - Telegraph
The net worth of Elon Musk, the Tesla chief executive, fell by nearly $34 billion on Thursday as the feud with President Trump led to the electric carmaker's shares experiencing their biggest drop in four years. The fortune of the world's richest man fell to $335 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Since the start of the year, Musk's net worth has declined by $97.9 billion. - The Times
The owner of British Gas has agreed to a ten-year deal worth more than £20 billion with a Norwegian energy giant to secure gas supplies, in a demonstration of the UK's continued reliance on fossil fuels as North Sea production winds down. Centrica said the agreement with Equinor, which is due to begin in October, will deliver five billion cubic metres of gas annually until 2035, representing about 10 per cent of UK gas demand and enough to supply approximately five million homes. - The Times
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