Thames Water has appointed a former Pennon Group PLC and Anglian Water executive as its new finance boss after the previous chief quit abruptly last week, MorningStar.co.uk reported. Steve Buck will join next week at a "pivotal" moment for the heavily indebted water group as it searches for a buyer to help stabilise its finances. Buck was formerly the CFO at Pennon, which owns South West Water, and at Anglian Water. He has also held a number of senior finance roles at British Gas owner Centrica PLC, and previously worked for Thames Water between 2002 and 2007.

The U.K. government has been told by a select committee that they must take a tough approach to clawing back taxpayers' money loaned to rugby union teams during the covid-19 pandemic, Worcester News reported. The Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) loaned £474million in total to 120 organisations in the sport and culture sectors to help them survive the impact of the pandemic, with £123.8m of that loaned to Premiership Rugby clubs.

U.K. retailer Select Fashion has reportedly collapsed after closing 35 stores last month and left staff without redundancy pay or owed wages, PA Media reported. It is understood that insolvency firm Moorfields has launched a wind down of the womenswear chain after a creditors’ meeting was held last Friday to approve a voluntary liquidation. The group had already shut 35 shops in mid-March having quietly trimmed down its estate since the start of the year.

Thames Water, the financially stricken utility which has been teetering on the edge of insolvency, is set to be taken over by KKR, the American private equity group, The Times reported. KKR has been selected as a preferred bidder by the Thames Water board for its offer to take control of the shares of the utility in return for what was an original offer of a £4 billion cash injection. The offer envisages creditors taking significant writedowns in their exposure to Thames near-£20 billion of gross debt.

Swansea University’s Bay Campus on the outskirts of the Welsh city was expected to attract a wave of new fee-paying students to boost revenue after the government squeezed funding to the sector. These days, it’s more of a millstone after overseas enrollments failed to grow as much as expected, a symbol of the wider financial problems facing universities across the U.K., Bloomberg News reported. It takes 30 minutes by bus from the city center to reach the campus, which looked bleak last Friday with almost empty bike racks and fenced-off construction machinery.

The U.K. economy will grow slower than previously forecast in 2025, and the government will have to borrow more heavily over the coming years, Treasury Chief Rachel Reeves told lawmakers Wednesday, the Wall Street Journal reported. The Office for Budget Responsibility lowered its growth forecast for this year to 1% from 2% previously. On taking office in July, the left-of-center Labour government said reviving growth after 15 years of stagnation was its top priority.

U.K. inflation cooled a little in February, but remained well above the Bank of England’s target, likely keeping policymakers cautious as they mull further rate cuts, the Wall Street Journal reported. Consumer prices were 2.8% higher in February than a year earlier, compared with a 3.0% annual rate of inflation in January, according to data released Wednesday by the U.K. statistics agency. That slight decrease came in a little faster than economists had expected, and was driven by a shallower rise in energy prices and goods such as clothing and footwear.

The UK’s top financial watchdog has promised a “less intensive approach” to firms whose intentions are pure, signaling a more pragmatic stance in a new five-year strategy that leans heavily into the government’s growth agenda, Bloomberg News reported. The Financial Conduct Authority, responsible for supervising some 42,000 firms, is trying to cut back on excessive form-filling and other hurdles that the industry says makes the UK a less attractive market.

More than 8,300 bounce back loans issued to the construction sector during the pandemic are suspected to have been fraudulent, according to a Construction News report. The loans, issued from May 2020 as emergency relief of up to £50,000 for small companies, were backed by 100 per cent government guarantees. Data obtained by Construction News under the Freedom of Information Act from the British Business Bank, which facilitated the scheme, showed that 8,356 bounce back loans to the industry were flagged as suspected frauds by lenders at the end of January.