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Thames Water is burning cash at a faster rate than it earlier expected, piling pressure on the troubled utility to extend the term of £530mn of debt due to expire next month as the company seeks to avoid a renationalisation.

The UK’s largest water supplier has spent more money than it budgeted for in liquidity forecasts made in July, according to two people familiar with its finances. Those forecasts projected that it had enough cash to last until May 2025.

Thames has to extend a £530mn credit facility from banks that falls due on October 7, if it is to stay within an updated forecast made last week of having enough cash to last into the new year.

This loan was previously rolled over in April, but Thames has not yet agreed a new extension with its lending banks, according to people familiar with the matter. The utility has another £530mn loan that is due to expire in December, having previously been extended in June.

Thames Water is locked in negotiations with lenders over this and is “confident” that they will extend the facility in October, according to one person familiar with the utility’s thinking. Another person close to the discussions said that not extending the loan “blows the whole thing up”, so they expect the banks to ultimately acquiesce.

Thames Water, which supplies water and sewerage services to roughly a quarter of the population in England, is struggling under the weight of its nearly £19bn of debt — including borrowing at its parent company — and is seeking to avoid the government’s special administration regime, a form of nationalisation.

It is trying to raise potentially billions of pounds of equity to bolster its finances but the process, which is being run by investment bank Rothschild & Co, has been met with widespread investor scepticism.

Any equity will also be conditional on agreements over bill increases with watchdog Ofwat as well as a deal on regulatory fines; investors are concerned that these could wipe out any cash injection.

Thames Water announced on Friday that it had begun negotiations with its lenders to release £380mn of cash, which it has had to hold in reserve under the terms of its debt agreements. If it cannot access this reserve cash, and a further £420mn of credit lines, it will run out of cash shortly after Christmas, according to the statement.

In this scenario, the regional monopoly said it would have to “enter standstill under our financing”, giving it access to the £380mn of cash reserves and a further £550mn of “reserve liquidity facilities” that would take it through to May next year.

Accessing these facilities by entering into a so-called “standstill” would trigger restrictive covenants across its debt structure and is classed as a form of default in its bond documentation.

While the company can remain operational during that process, it would face new restrictions such as a “cessation of capital expenditure other than for essential maintenance”, according to its latest accounts.  

While lasting until May 2025 is in line with a forecast Thames Water gave in its annual report published in July, the pressures on its cash position have pushed it to change how it calculates this so-called “liquidity runway” to May.

Thames Water earlier excluded the £550mn of reserve facilities from these forecasts, but in its Friday announcement said they were now included in this analysis.

“We’ve always been very clear that Thames Water’s liquidity runway comprises both cash and undrawn facilities, and our statement on Friday was consistent with this position,” Thames Water said. “We remain focused on extending this liquidity runway further through discussions with our creditors.”

Thames Water is also in negotiations with a group of 90 creditors holding £9bn of debt at the utility’s operating company to provide a new loan that could be in the region of £1bn to further ease pressure on its finances before year-end, according to people familiar with the negotiations.

Any financing from this group — which includes US hedge funds such as Elliott Management and UK asset managers such as Abrdn — would rank ahead of the utility’s existing senior debt, they added.

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US President Joe Biden has urged world leaders to preserve democracy in his valedictory address to the United Nations, describing his decision not to seek re-election as an example of putting the greater good ahead of personal interest.

“My fellow leaders, let us never forget, some things are more important than staying in power,” he told delegates to the UN General Assembly to widespread applause.

Biden’s fourth and final address to the global body came as many of Washington’s closest allies nervously anticipate former president Donald Trump’s possible return to power next year.

“Never forget we are here to serve the people, not the other way around,” he said, adding that the future “will be won by those who unleash the full potential of their people to . . . live and love openly without fear. That’s the soul of democracy”.

Despite his plea, Biden failed to offer any new ideas on how to end the conflicts that are threatening stability in Europe and the Middle East, instead repeating his administration’s appeals for peace.

On a ceasefire agreement to end the conflict in Gaza, he said: “Now is the time for the parties to finalise its terms, bring the hostages home and secure security for Israel and Gaza free of Hamas, ease the suffering in Gaza and end this war.”

He also said his administration was committed to averting a wider war in the Middle East even after an Israeli air assault on Lebanon on Monday killed nearly 500 people, in a dramatic escalation of its conflict with Hizbollah, the Iranian-backed movement.

“Full scale war is not in anyone’s interest. Even as the situation has escalated, a diplomatic solution is still possible,” Biden said. “In fact, it remains the only path to lasting security to allow the residents from both countries to return to their homes . . . That’s what working, that’s what we’re working tirelessly to achieve.”

On the war between Russia and Ukraine, Biden warned that the world had a “choice to make” — a veiled reference to Trump, who has pledged to end the conflict immediately after taking office should he win the US presidential election in November.

Pointing out that Russian president Vladimir Putin had failed to achieve his goal of destroying Ukraine and weakening Nato, Biden said that the world “now has another choice to make”.

“Will we sustain our support, help Ukraine win this war and preserve its freedom, or walk away and let aggression be renewed and a nation be destroyed?” he said.

“We cannot grow weary, we cannot look away, and we will not let up on our support for Ukraine, not until Ukraine wins a just and durable peace,” he added.

Biden ended his address with a plea for unity and a warning against isolationism as democracies across the world come under threat.

“We are stronger than we think. We’re stronger together than alone,” he said.

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Sitting for a portrait in 1988, the Menendez family seem the picture of American affluence and aspiration. In the centre of the image, the patriarch José, a Cuban immigrant who built a fortune in the entertainment industry, beams next to his wife of 25 years, Kitty. Flanking them on either side are brothers Lyle and Erik, a Princeton student and tennis prodigy respectively. But about a year later, there would be a shooting at the family’s Beverly Hills mansion. The parents, the two victims; the killers, their sons.

Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, the second instalment in Netflix’s true crime anthology, Monster, revisits this chilling case and the ensuing high-profile trials which resulted in life convictions for both brothers in 1996. Co-created by Ryan Murphy, the nine-part series largely finds the prolific showrunner sticking to his distinctive, if divisive, MO of combining ghoulish detail with glossy production.

More effective is the way the show plays with our perceptions of who the “monsters” are here. While the first couple of chapters introduce us to an ostensible short-fused sociopath in Lyle (Nicholas Alexander Chavez) and emotionally inarticulate teen in Erik (Cooper Koch), the episodes that follow the brothers’ eventual arrest sheds new light on the crime. Or rather, they plunge us into the abysmal darkness of a life lived in the shadow of a father who allegedly bullied, beat and raped his sons, and a mother who supposedly knew everything and said nothing.

In flashbacks, Javier Bardem terrifies as José — not just in explosive outbursts, but in moments which hint at fathomless cruelty and rage below the surface — while Chloë Sevigny gives a disquieting sense of Kitty as a woman numbed by depression and unstinting devotion to her husband. But the series is never more powerful than in its fifth episode, in which Erik opens up to his lawyer (Ari Graynor) about the abuse he suffered and the shame and helplessness that followed. Here Murphy eschews all his gimmicks and simply places a camera in front of Koch for 35 uninterrupted minutes.

Monsters proves itself capable of confronting a complex case with sensitivity — which makes its increasing sensationalism and salaciousness all the more frustrating. There is a dissatisfying irony too about the presence of a journalist character (played by Nathan Lane) regaling friends with grisly details of the killing. Look at how this vulture revels in the awful tragedy, the show says, as if it weren’t doing the same thing with every bit of gratuitous gore and every superfluous minute that strains to stretch this bleak story into a sprawling TV saga.

★★★☆☆

On Netflix now

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Israel claimed to have killed a top Hizbollah commander, Ibrahim Qobeissi, head of the Iran-backed militant group’s missiles division, in an air strike that rocked the southern suburbs of Beirut on Tuesday

Hizbollah has not commented on the claim and it remains unclear whether Qobeissi was inside the building that was hit. Lebanese authorities said six people were killed and 15 injured in the attack.

“Qobeissi was a significant source of knowledge in the field of missiles and had close ties to senior military leaders in Hizbollah,” the Israel Defense Forces said, naming him as head of the group’s missiles and rockets force.

If confirmed, Tuesday’s strike would mark the latest in a string of killings of senior Hizbollah figures. On Saturday, an Israeli attack on Beirut killed the group’s special operations commander Ibrahim Aqil along with 15 other operatives, including what Israel said was the “senior chain of command of the Radwan Force”, an elite unit within the group.

The strikes have added pressure on the militant group, which has suffered one of its most devastating weeks on record after Israel’s military launched a massive bombardment of southern and eastern Lebanon, claiming on Tuesday to have hit 3,000 Hizbollah targets in the past two days.

At least 558 people have been killed, including 50 children and 94 women, since Israel began its intense air strikes on Monday. Nearly 2,000 more people were wounded, while tens of thousands have fled the bombing in southern Lebanon.

In its statement about its latest strike on Beirut, the IDF said Qobeissi joined Hizbollah in the 1980s, after which he held several top roles in the militant group, including as a senior officer in its operations unit in southern Lebanon.

“In these roles, he was responsible for planning and executing numerous terror attacks against Israeli civilians and soldiers,” the IDF said, also claiming that other commanders from the division were with Qobeissi during the attack.

In the attack, Israel struck a six-storey apartment building in Ghobeiry, a densely populated southern suburb of Beirut where Hizbollah has a dominating presence.

A Hizbollah official shared an image on social media of the building with its top floor reduced to rubble. Debris littered the street, dust filled the air and cars were damaged near the site of attack, videos on social media showed.

It comes after Israel’s military chief said the IDF would continue to step up attacks on Hizbollah. IDF chief of staff Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi on Tuesday said the militant group “must not be given a break” and pledged to “accelerate offensive operations”.

Israeli leaders have stated that they aim to continue the operation, which the army has named ‘Northern Arrows’, and says is focused on hitting Hizbollah’s weapons stores, until it became safe for residents of its northern regions, displaced by months of cross-border fire, to return to their homes.

Hizbollah on Tuesday said it had used a new rocket, the Fadi 3, in an attack on an Israeli military base. On Monday, the group began framing its attacks as being “in defence of Lebanon and its people”, where it had previously described them as responses to various Israeli strikes as well as steps in support of the people of Gaza. A Hizbollah official said defending Lebanon had become the “main idea”.

Several international airlines suspended flights to Beirut and Tel Aviv. US national security spokesperson John Kirby urged Americans in Lebanon to leave the country while commercial flights were sill available.

“We want to make sure that there are still commercial options available for Americans to leave, and they should be leaving now while those options are available,” Kirby told ABC News.

World leaders meeting at the UN General Assembly called for a halt to the escalation and warned the fighting was on the verge of tipping into an all-out regional war.

“No country stands to gain from a further escalation in the Middle East,” G7 foreign ministers said.

US President Joe Biden said diplomacy was the “only path” to end tensions between Israel and Hizbollah.

“Full-scale war is not in anyone’s interest, even though the situation has escalated, a diplomatic solution is still possible,” Biden said while addressing the UN on Tuesday.

He also called for an end to the fighting between Israel and Hamas in Gaza. His administration has been pressing for a ceasefire there which is also seen as connected to the tension on Israel’s northern border.

“Now is the time for the parties to finalise its terms . . . and end this war.”

Cartography by Steven Bernard and Chris Cook

Over a third (36%) of discretionary fund managers (DFMs) described themselves as “fans” of investment trusts, and prefer them to other types of investment.

This is according to the Association of Investment Companies (AIC) and Research in Finance.

The figure has risen by 2%, from 34% last year.

Over 30% of DFMs are expecting to write more investment trust business, with attractive discounts being the top reason (82%).

Other reasons for DFMs increasing investment trust business was strong performance of certain trusts (40%), increasing exposure to specialist assets (38%) and a more favourable view of investment trusts generally (38%).

AIC research director Nick Britton said: “At a time when centralised investment propositions are exerting more of a stranglehold on wealth managers’ investment decisions, it’s encouraging to see that many individuals are able to go off buy list in pursuit of attractive opportunities for their clients.

“Wide discounts are still by far the main reason that wealth managers are looking to increase their exposure to trusts, but this year we have seen that factor diminish in importance and other traditional advantages come to the fore, such as strong performance and access to alternative assets.”

Research in Finance CEO Toby Finden-Crofts added: “It is clear centralised buy lists are used extensively by wealth managers and discretionary fund managers. But to take advantage of the opportunity investment trusts offer, investors are increasingly using funds which sit outside of the buy lists.

“Our research shows that it’s not only the structural benefits of the products that are appealing but the access to some interesting and less accessible markets, such as private equity, infrastructure and renewables.”

In order to obtain these results, Research in Finance surveyed 157 DFMs. The research is funded by a consortium of asset managers and the AIC.

Recently, the Treasury and the Financial Conduct Authority announced cost disclosure requirements for investment trusts will be temporarily banned.

This announcement came after years of investment companies calling for change. These rules were inherited by the European Union (EU) and made it appear that investment trusts were more costly to put money into than they were.

The Treasury said it will lay out legislation to provide the FCA with the appropriate powers to deliver reform – the new Consumer Composite Investments (CCI) regime.

It said the new CCI regime will deliver more tailored and flexible rules to “address concerns across industry with current disclosure requirements, including for costs”.

The UK’s new retail disclosure regime is expected to be in place in the first half of 2025, subject to Parliamentary approval and following a consultation from the FCA.

The FCA intends to consult on proposed rules for the CCI regime this Autumn.