Wednesday newspaper round-up: Thames Water, Johnson & Johnson, BoE

(Sharecast News) - Thames Water may need as much as �10bn in debt and equity investment to repair its finances, according to a representative of creditors hoping to lend the struggling utility another �3bn. London's high court heard evidence on Tuesday that suggested the UK's largest water company may need significantly more resources than the roughly �6.3bn it has previously indicated. - Guardian

Lawyers representing 3,500 claimants are preparing to sue the pharmaceutical firm Johnson & Johnson (J&J) over alleged links between talcum powder and cancer, in what is expected to be one of the largest pharmaceutical product group actions in English and Welsh legal history. They claim that thousands of women and some men contracted cancers after using J&J talcum powder products that had been contaminated with asbestos. - Guardian

An increase in the use of smart doorbells by wealthy households is partly to blame for the crisis plaguing Britain's jobs market data, the UK's chief statistician has said. Sir Ian Diamond told MPs that the Office for National Statistics' (ONS) struggles with unreliable jobs data were partly caused by people in "advantaged areas" with camera doorbells who were ignoring its interviewers. - Telegraph

Octopus Energy's profits more than halved last year as it spent more money in its race to overtake British Gas as Britain's largest household energy supplier. The supplier, which now serves almost 12.9m household accounts across the UK, said on Tuesday that pre-tax profits fell to �77.6m over the year to May 2024 from �283m the prior year. That was accompanied by a 1pc dip in turnover, which fell to �12.4bn. - Telegraph

Google's parent company, Alphabet, reported lower-than-expected sales from its cloud computing business, stoking concerns about the payoff from its big bet on artificial intelligence. Revenue from the cloud computing business, which sells services to companies adopting AI technology, rose 30 per cent to $12 billion in the fourth quarter. - The Times

The Bank of England should prioritise stimulating a stagnant UK economy over restraining persistent inflation and cut interest rates this Thursday, according to The Times shadow monetary policy committee. The nine members of the shadow monetary policy committee (MPC) voted 5-4 in favour of lowering the UK base rate by a quarter of a percentage point to 4.5 per cent this week, marking the third cut since the Bank of England started loosening policy last summer. - The Times