Selling Thames Water to a Chinese-controlled company could give Beijing access to sensitive customer data, which might pose a risk to national security, a senior former intelligence officer has warned, The Times reported. Sir Simon Gass, who served as chairman of the government’s joint intelligence committee until two years ago, said that proposals to hand Thames Water over to the Hong Kong-based infrastructure firm CKI required “close scrutiny from a national security perspective”.

Shares in the embattled Bitcoin miner, Argo Blockchain, tumbled more than 20% on Friday, after the company announced that it had failed to negotiate terms for a bailout loan, CCN.com reported. Argo remains locked in talks with Growler Mining, a potential white knight investor, but has warned that without fresh capital or a refinancing deal, it may soon have to enter insolvency proceedings. In a market update on Friday, Aug. 22, Argo said that while the parties are working diligently toward finalizing the terms of the Plan, there can be no assurance of reaching a deal.

U.K. consumers felt a little better about their finances this month as the Bank of England lowered borrowing costs, though sentiment remains weak amid wider economic turmoil, the Wall Street Journal reported. Consumer confidence rose two points to minus 17 in August from minus 19 in July, according to research group GfK’s monthly index, published with the Nuremberg Institute for Market Decisions. The increase suggests sentiment is at its sunniest so far this year, but still well below the prepandemic trend.

The U.K.'s third-largest steelworks has been placed under government control, creating an uncertain future for nearly 1,500 workers in Rotherham and Sheffield, BBC.com reported. Insolvency courts granted a compulsory winding up order sought by creditors owed hundreds of millions of pounds by Speciality Steels UK (SSUK) – part of the Liberty Steel metals empire of controversial tycoon Sanjeev Gupta.

The largest creditor to struggling water company Thames Water has said it is confident that it will not lose money, joking that the UK was comparable to Puerto Rico, which paid lenders to its water company despite a crippling debt crisis, The Guardian reported. Dominic Frederico, the chief executive of U.S. insurer Assured Guaranty, suggested that the U.K. government would not impose losses on creditors.

Three U.K. debt-collection agencies have been shut down after spending thousands of pounds of their clients' money at bookmakers, hotels and football clubs, BBC.com reported. Sunderland-based EDC Group NE Ltd, UK EDC Ltd and UK TCF Limited charged clients to collect debts on their behalf but failed to pass on almost £55,000 of their clients' money. The companies, which were all owned by the same director, have been dissolved by the High Court following an investigation by the Insolvency Service (IS).

Holly Willoughby’s media company is set to return to a specialist insolvency court in November following the result of a tribunal appeal, The Independent reported. Roxy Media, the media production and management firm run by the TV presenter and her husband Dan Baldwin, is facing winding-up proceedings from His Majesty’s Revenue & Customs (HMRC). A hearing at the Insolvency and Companies Court in April heard that the firm owed £377,000 in tax, which had been reduced from an unknown amount.