NAGOYA, Japan — A record burst of rain flooded Nagoya’s streets, halted trains and briefly emptied temporary athlete housing this week, 10 days before the city is due to open the Asian Games.

About 104.5 millimeters fell in the hour to 4:53 p.m. Tuesday, the heaviest hourly total the Nagoya Local Meteorological Observatory has listed since records began in 1890. It surpassed the 97.0 millimeters that defined the Tokai flood of Sept. 11, 2000. Chikusa Ward logged 219.5 millimeters in the 24 hours to early Wednesday.

Mayor Ichiro Hirosawa told reporters the Games would still start on Sept. 19. “The situation is not severe enough to jeopardise the opening of the Games on the 19th,” he said. “Based on the current situation, I don’t believe there will be any problem to hold the Asian Games.” He also said roofs leaked at several venues but that the damage was limited. “There has been limited impact like rainwater leaking from the roofs of some buildings, but the situation is not so serious that the opening on the 19th is in jeopardy for now,” he said in remarks carried by multiple outlets. “Given the current circumstances, I believe there will be no obstacles to holding the Asian Games.”

An Asian Games official told Reuters that about 400 athletes and staff were moved to higher ground from temporary housing at Garden Pier — converted shipping containers — and returned about two hours later when the highest alerts eased. No injuries were reported in that group.

The Japan Meteorological Agency issued a Level 5 overflow warning for the Shonai River system at 6:20 p.m. Tuesday and lifted it at 12:40 a.m. Wednesday. The city ordered emergency safety measures in parts of Chikusa, Moriyama and Meito wards. Fire-agency tallies Tuesday evening put the highest “protect your life now” order over Nagoya and neighboring Seto at about 1.17 million people. Broader evacuation instructions in the city were described as covering on the order of 2 million residents. About 3,500 people used designated shelters, according to municipal figures circulated with the recovery update.

Rivers that drain the east side of the city — including stretches of the Yada, Ueda and Kanare — ran high. In Meito Ward the Ueda River overtopped, tearing fencing and peeling bank pavement. National underpasses flooded. The Tokaido Shinkansen stopped for about two hours on some sections. City buses and subway service shut down at the height of the commute. In the Sakae shopping district, water reached mid-calf. A 78-year-old woman in Showa Ward told Yomiuri she left a department store to find the road underwater. “When I finished shopping and went outside, the road was covered in water and I was shocked,” she said. “I don’t know when the bus will come. With global climate change, the way rain falls lately is extreme and frightening.”

Jiji Press, citing local counts as of noon Wednesday, said 21 people in Nagoya and two in Kitanagoya were slightly injured. Two houses were partly damaged. Forty-five homes took water above floor level and 45 below. About 200 vehicles in Nagoya were stranded. No deaths were reported inside the city. A separate weather band along the Pacific coast was linked to a woman in her 60s found dead in a submerged vehicle in Iwaki, Fukushima Prefecture — outside the Games host’s limits.

The government applied the Disaster Relief Act to speed aid. Advisories remained into Thursday as a front and low-pressure system kept the Tokai region unstable. Forecasts after the peak still called for tens of millimeters more.

Urban drains in Japanese cities are often designed around roughly 50 millimeters an hour. Tuesday’s burst was about double that. Linear rainbands sat over western Aichi and Gifu’s Mino area in the late afternoon, the setup that turns a city grid into a lake before pumps catch up.

The Games run Sept. 19 to Oct. 4, with some events earlier; basketball was listed to start Sept. 10. Banners for the Aichi-Nagoya Games stood in the same flooded streets. That is the political pressure behind Hirosawa’s briefings: a multi-sport event cannot slip because an opening ceremony is already printed.

What receded overnight is water. What remains is silt in underpasses, insurance claims on cars and a test of whether leaked roofs dry before delegations fill the stands. The mayor’s line is that they will. The rain gauge’s line is that Nagoya has now seen an hour worse than the flood it still uses as a warning. Thursday’s leftover showers will decide how much of that warning is still in force when the first tip-off is supposed to start.

Zoopla, the UK’s second-largest property website, returned to a pre-tax profit of £13.3m in 2025 despite a 1 per cent fall in revenue to £83.2m, which the company attributed to a change in its advertising strategy.

The Rightmove rival had reported a loss of £5.2m the previous year, when it wrote down the value of Yourkeys, a business it acquired in 2021 that helps developers manage their sales, by £19.5m.

Revenue had slipped by 7 per cent to £84.2m in 2024. Zoopla put the latest decline down to “lower programmatic and direct advertising revenue” as it moved towards promoting “more relevant property-related advertising” on its site.

The company does not disclose how many estate agents pay to list homes on its website but said its customer base “remained broadly stable” last year.

Paul Whitehead, chief executive of Zoopla, said: “Lots of marketplaces put what’s called programmatic advertising across their sites, but it’s generic.

“There’s some short-term revenue there, but is it the best consumer experience? Probably not. We want to work with [advertisers] that are contextual to the house move, whether that’s lenders or estate agents or credit score providers. It’s a tough decision because you lose some revenue as a result.”

Whitehead, 55, took charge as chief executive last year. He previously ran Cazoo, the used-car website that fell into administration in 2024.

Zoopla has been owned since 2018 by Silver Lake Partners, the American private equity firm that also holds a stake in City Football Group, the owner of Manchester City.

Rather than compete directly with the volume of leads Rightmove generates for its estate agent and developer customers, Whitehead wants Zoopla to offer fewer but better leads. Central to that approach is signing up more people to track the value of their current homes on the platform.

At the end of 2025 there were 5.4 million homeowners tracking their home’s value on Zoopla, a third more than a year earlier. The company says the figure has risen to 6.4 million so far in 2026.

“We believe [having a large number of homeowners using our platform] delivers great value to our partners who are getting more instructions,” Whitehead said.

“We can provide data insights even before people are in that actual moving window. You might start looking at particular types of properties or save a property, these are all signals to us that someone might be thinking about moving.”

He added that the new strategy was “starting to deliver in the numbers”. Alongside the return to profitability, Zoopla reported a 9 per cent increase in revenue in the first quarter of 2026.

Zoopla remains well behind Rightmove on earnings. In the first six months of 2026 alone, Rightmove generated a pre-tax profit of £149.1m on revenue of £225.8m, according to its half-year report, which also showed revenue up 7 per cent on the same period a year earlier.

Rightmove, which rejected a £5.6bn takeover approach from Rupert Murdoch’s REA Group in 2024, reported average revenue per advertiser of £1,726 a month in the first half of 2026. Zoopla does not disclose its monthly cost, which is thought to be as little as half of that.

“We’ll only increase prices if we’re delivering value, we won’t just do it for the sake of it,” Whitehead said. “Our competition is still very much focused on volume of leads, we’re more focused on intent and quality.”

Jamie Young

Jamie Young is Senior Reporter at Business Matters, covering SME finance, employment law and Westminster policy since 2016. He has reported on every Budget and Autumn Statement since 2018, helped make sense of the ‘covid era’ and the bounce-back loan scheme from launch through the fraud investigations, and broke the magazine’s coverage of the 2024 late-payment reforms. He joined Business Matters straight from completing his BA in Administration from Exeter University and is NCTJ-qualified. Reach him at jyoung@cbmeg.co.uk

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The company’s toll revenue climbed approximately 25% year-on-year (YoY) to Rs 807 crore in August 2026, compared with Rs 646 crore in the same month last year.

The robust performance was driven by sustained traffic growth across IRB Group’s highway assets, along with the benefit of tariff revisions implemented at the beginning of FY27.

Commenting on the performance, Amitabh Murarka, Deputy CEO, IRB Infrastructure Developers, said the strong toll revenue growth in August reflected sustained traffic growth across the company’s assets.

He added that rising traffic volumes, coupled with the tariff revision implemented at the start of FY27, further supported revenue performance.

Live Events

Murarka also highlighted the positive outlook for the coming months, pointing to robust GDP growth and increased economic activity. With the festive season beginning with the Ganesh Festival, the company expects traffic momentum to remain strong and support further growth in toll revenues.

Key Projects Deliver Strong Growth

Among the major assets, IRB MP Expressway Pvt. Ltd., which operates the Mumbai-Pune Expressway and Old Mumbai-Pune Highway (NH-4), reported toll revenue of Rs 172.1 crore in August 2026, up from Rs 144.7 crore a year ago. Meanwhile, IRB Ahmedabad Vadodara Super Express Tollway Pvt. Ltd., which operates the Ahmedabad-Vadodara Expressway (NE-1) and NH-48, generated toll revenue of Rs 80.3 crore, compared with Rs 69.1 crore in August 2025.IRB Group is one of India’s largest integrated infrastructure platforms focused on roads and highways. The group currently has 28 revenue-generating highway assets with an aggregate value of approximately Rs 94,000 crore across 13 states.

Its assets witness around 1.5 million vehicle crossings every day, with the group accounting for nearly one-tenth of India’s total toll revenue.

The latest toll collection numbers indicate continued strength in traffic volumes and provide a positive operational trigger for IRB Infrastructure Developers, with investors closely watching whether the momentum sustains through the upcoming festive season.

Stock Price and Valuation

IRB Infrastructure Developers shares witnessed strong buying interest, surging as much as 8% intraday before paring some of the gains. The stock was last trading around 4% higher, giving the company a market capitalisation of approximately Rs 24,445 crore.

The stock’s 52-week high stands at Rs 23.95, indicating that the recent rally has brought it closer to its yearly peak.

On the valuation front, IRB Infrastructure Developers trades at a price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio of 24.14, while its price-to-book (P/B) ratio stands at 0.55.

(Disclaimer: Recommendations, suggestions, views and opinions given by the experts are their own. These do not represent the views of Economic Times)

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