Wednesday newspaper round-up: Uber hack, Hinckley Point, LSE
Uber concealed a massive global breach of the personal information of 57 million customers and drivers in October 2016, failing to notify the individuals and regulators, the company acknowledged on Tuesday. Uber also confirmed it had paid the hackers responsible $100,000 to delete the data and keep the breach quiet, which was first reported by Bloomberg. – Guardian
MPs have accused the government of failing to protect consumers over the price it has promised to pay for power from the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant. The Commons public accounts committee said the subsidy contract for Hinkley Point C, agreed in 2016 after years of delays, would hit poorest households hardest. – Guardian
With the latest technology at their fingertips, modern water companies should be better than ever at finding and fixing leaks. But it turns out many of them are making use of a rather less cutting edge method – magic. Ten out of 12 major water suppliers in the UK admitted to using “dowsing” or “divining rods” to detect underground water, a method which has been widely discredited by modern science. The rods were once believed to twitch in the hands of a “diviner” to point to underground reserves, a method which is believed to date back to the 15th century. – Telegraph
One of the London Stock Exchange's top investors has urged the Governor of the Bank of England to step in and remove the exchange's chairman, in a significant escalation of one of the most bitter City spats in recent memory. Sir Christopher Hohn has written the latest of a series of open letters to Douglas Brydon, the chairman of the LSE, in which he has warned him to not "undertake a character assassination" of the exchange's chief executive Xavier Rolet, arguing this will make it harder to hire future executives. – Telegraph
Auditors who sign off flawed accounts could face fines of more than £10 million after a watchdog said that it would be raising the penalties it could impose on those who breached its professional code of conduct. The Financial Reporting Council said that “seriously poor” audit work by the Big Four accountancy firms would lead to larger financial penalties after a review of its sanctions by Sir Christopher Clarke, a former judge. – The Times
Two North Sea projects were sold yesterday to new-generation explorers. BP, the oil major, sold three fields to Serica Energy for up to £300 million, while Ineos paid a “substantial” sum that could lead to the development of a new gasfield. Ineos is targeting an area 93 miles north of the Shetland Islands, where there is estimated to be up to three trillion cubic feet of gas. - The