TheChek News Flow

Temperatures underground often hover around 86 degrees in the summer, despite decades of attempts to bring them down

LONDON—A century ago, the London Underground wooed passengers during the summer with the promise it was “cooler below.” That seems like a cruel joke today.

“It genuinely feels like hell down there,” said Hussein Zaaiter, a London-based student. “It’s a free sauna on the Central line,” he joked, referring to one of the Tube’s hottest train lines.

Riding the Tube during the summer has long been an unpleasant, sweaty experience. The bad news for Londoners is that the Tube isn’t just hot, it’s getting hotter. And figuring out how to cool it down presents challenges that air conditioning can’t easily fix.

Engineers have spent decades trying everything from industrial fans to giant blocks of ice to temper the sweltering subterranean climate, but a remedy remains elusive.

Heat has been steadily building below the surface ever since the world’s oldest underground transportation system opened in 1863. Across all lines, average temperatures increased by 1 to 3 degrees Celsius over the past 10 years, according to measurements from Transport for London.

Summer temperatures on the Tube now regularly exceed 30 degrees Celsius, or 86 degrees Fahrenheit, the legal limit for transporting cattle, pigs and sheep in the U.K.

The temperature at the surface doesn’t really affect the temperature in the tube. Throughout the summer, the tube maintains a fairly constant 86 degrees, while the surface wobbles between lows in the 50s at night and as high as 104 degrees during the day.

Zaaiter has ridden the Paris Metro and the New York subway, but “it’s never as bad,” he said.

For Verity Walker, a musical-theater actress in London, the heat underground has a habit of sticking with her. “I’m turning up to auditions, and I’m worried I smell,” she said. “The price should be decreased in the summer because of the conditions.”

Climate activists turned the Tube into their personal sauna, riding around the city in their bathrobes and hair towels to raise awareness about the heat.

Experts pin the Tube’s hot mess on its tight Victorian-era tunnels, which restrict air circulation, especially on deeper lines. Moreover, London’s bedrock is composed of a dense, stiff clay that absorbs and retains warmth.

Every day, friction from accelerating and braking trains generates more heat. Even carelessly discarded newspapers obstruct air vents behind seats and trap hot air in train cars, exacerbating the problem.

In 2003, then-Mayor of London Ken Livingston launched a competition with a £100,000 prize for a tunnel-cooling solution, or about $159,500 at the time. Of the 3,400 entries, many simply suggested riders not wear clothes. Other proposals included handing out Popsicles or putting up pictures of snowmen. No practical designs emerged, and the competition was closed in 2005.

Since then, TfL has spent millions of pounds on initiatives to beat the heat. Early attempts included placing large blocks of ice in refrigeration units under train seats, where the thawing ice would cool air passing over it. Groundwater was also tapped to try to cool the tunnels.

Industrial fans were installed at stations. Even after the TfL discovered they slightly increased temperatures because of the heat generated by the motors, the fans remained. Surveys indicated the fast-flowing air made people feel more comfortable.

“It always perplexed me that boffins could produce mobile phones the size of a credit card yet passengers would emerge dripping with sweat from Tube trains,” Boris Johnson said in 2018 during his stint as mayor.

Air conditioning has now been added to roughly 40% of London Underground trains, but it is hard to install on the smaller, deeper Tube lines. It also isn’t a panacea. AC simply moves heat from one place to another, so while trains may get cooler, platforms and tunnels get hotter.

Engineering experts have proposed various solutions, all to cool reception. Ideas included regenerative braking, where heat from brakes is recovered to use as energy for trains or stations; improved ventilation systems; energy-efficient construction materials; and smart sensor networks to monitor and regulate temperatures in real time.

Even successful solutions, such as using heat pumps to remove excess heat, have proved tricky to employ across the vast network. One London borough uses the excess heat from the local Tube station to warm nearby homes, but expanding the program faces logistical and funding challenges. A citywide heat network is at least a decade away.

TfL, noting the “stop-start nature of funding,” says it’s focused on areas that provide the greatest relief to passengers. Next year, after several delays, it plans to finally introduce the first air-conditioned trains on a deep tunnel Tube line. They will still fit along the Piccadilly line thanks to the AC being placed under the trains, a design that took years to master. TfL said it is also exploring the possibility of cooling panels, subject to funding.

While the heat makes journeys uncomfortable for passengers, it’s a prolonged punishment for staff—even with the cooling systems in drivers’ cabs.

Tube bosses have been encouraging train drivers to drink more water, but union organizer Finn Brennan says that’s an impractical solution. “With more water, we need the toilet more,” he said, adding that drivers are often on a strict schedule with limited breaks. “This isn’t a situation that will get better.”

With London enduring repeated summer heat waves, some train workers are planning a “heat strike” if temperatures rise above 96.8 degrees.

TfL has sought to reassure the public, saying it has “a comprehensive hot weather plan in place” to get through the summer.

Its enduring advice: “Please carry water with you.”

Shanghai-based MiniMax, valued at around $4 billion after a recent financing round, is targeting a stock market debut as soon as this year

MiniMax has confidentially filed for an initial public offering in Hong Kong, according to people familiar with the matter, signaling the onset of a race among China’s generative AI startups to tap public markets.

Shanghai-based MiniMax, which was valued at around $4 billion after a recent financing round, is targeting a stock market debut as soon as this year, one of the people said. The company has also filed its Hong Kong listing plan with China’s securities regulator for review, another person said.

The move comes as China seeks to bolster its homegrown artificial-intelligence industry with state funding and policy stimulus. Chinese leaders have made AI a national priority, incentivizing faster adoption of the technology among government agencies and companies.

Beijing-based Zhipu AI, another large-language-model developer, has also been preparing for a public listing. The company has hired banks but is still weighing the listing location, people familiar with the matter said. Both MiniMax and Zhipu count Alibaba and Tencent as investors.

Cantor Fitzgerald close to $4bn Spac deal with bitcoin pioneer

Brandon Lutnick in late-stage talks with Adam Back in latest move to use blank cheque vehicles to buy the cryptocurrency

Brandon Lutnick, son of US commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, is nearing a roughly $4bn deal with an early bitcoin supporter to buy billions of dollars in the digital tokens using a vehicle backed by Cantor Fitzgerald.

Cantor Equity Partners 1, a blank cheque vehicle that raised $200mn in cash in an initial public offering in January, is in late-stage talks with Adam Back, founder of crypto trading group Blockstream Capital, to buy more than $3bn in the digital currency, according to two people briefed on the talks.

The deal, which mirrors a $3.6bn crypto buying venture Brandon Lutnick struck with SoftBank and Tether in April, would advance Cantor Fitzgerald’s strategy of using publicly listed shell companies to buy bitcoin as it aims to take advantage of a surge in digital currency prices amid US President Donald Trump’s deregulatory push. Howard Lutnick handed control of Cantor Fitzgerald to his children in May.

Back is in discussions to contribute as much as 30,000 bitcoin to Cantor Equity Partners 1, worth more than $3bn. It would be part of a broader deal with the blank cheque company in which it would raise as much $800mn in outside capital to make further purchases of the digital currency, putting the overall deal at more than $4bn.

Back and Blockstream Capital would contribute their bitcoin in exchange for shares in the Cantor vehicle, which would be renamed BSTR Holdings.

A deal could come as early as this week, said the people, who cautioned that terms could still change. If completed in the coming days, it would come during what Republican lawmakers have dubbed “crypto week” as they debate legislation tied to digital currencies.

The deal would make Cantor one of the world’s most active crypto buyers. It is using blank cheque vehicles led by the younger Lutnick, 27, who was named chair of the brokerage in February when his father was confirmed to be Trump’s top trade official.

Cantor’s combined crypto purchases between its two vehicles, BSTR Holdings and Twenty One Capital, could reach nearly $10bn this year.

Cantor and Blockstream did not respond to requests for comment.

In the Blockstream deal, Cantor would partner with one of the crypto industry’s earliest supporters. Back is an early cryptographer whose work developing the Hashcash cryptographic proof was cited by the pseudonymous founder of bitcoin, Satoshi Nakamoto, in his bitcoin white paper.

The Hashcash proof-of-work system Back proposed in 1997 became the foundation for bitcoin mining — the process by which new bitcoins are created and verified. He is also the co-founder of California-based blockchain company Blockstream, which was founded in 2014 and is backed by Khosla Ventures and Baillie Gifford, among others.

Back has personally funded several companies that have stockpiled bitcoin this year, including Paris-listed The Blockchain Group, which announced on Tuesday that he had invested €5mn as part of an equity raise. Last month, he also funded a Skr150mn ($15mn) convertible bond for Swedish health technology and bitcoin treasury company H100 Group.

The Cantor deal would mark the latest in a series of high-profile deals where special purpose acquisition companies are used as vehicles to buy bitcoin, as investors seek to emulate billionaire bitcoin evangelist Michael Saylor’s company, called Strategy, in hoarding the digital currency.

Other groups that have recently gone on crypto-buying endeavours include Trump Media & Technology Group, the media and crypto trading company created by Trump and his family, and a blank cheque vehicle led by digital currency promoter Anthony Pompliano.

Elliott Management builds stake in Global Payments in wake of Worldpay deal

Payment processing group’s shares lag behind rivals after investors took umbrage at $24.2bn acquisition

Activist hedge fund Elliott Management has built a sizeable stake in Global Payments as the payment processing group looks to win back investors after its $24.2bn acquisition of Worldpay caused shares to plunge to a 10-year low, said people familiar with the matter.

The investment comes as the Atlanta-based payments group plots its future after buying Worldpay earlier this year in its biggest acquisition to date as it tries to grow its core business of processing payments for merchants.

The three-way, cash-and-shares acquisition with private equity group GTCR and financial technology company Fidelity Information Services came as a surprise to investors. It jarred with pledges from Global Payments’ management including at its 2024 investor day to focus on divestments and returning cash to shareholders.

Elliott’s demands and the size of its stake could not be established.

When the Worldpay deal was announced in April, shares in Global Payments fell 17.5 per cent on the day.

Although the stock has since rallied, its market capitalisation of $19bn means the company is trading at 7 times earnings, among the lowest levels across the industry. Shares in Global Payments jumped 5.2 per cent in after-hours trading on Tuesday.

Conversely, shares in rival FIS, which exited its 45 per cent stake in Worldpay and bought Global Payments’ issuer solutions business for $13.5bn as part of the deal, soared on the day.

In order to fund the deal, Global Payments trimmed its capital returns target between 2025 and 2027 from $7.5bn to $7bn, reversing course on its promise to prioritise share buybacks and dividends. But the company has said it will boost its capital returns from 2028 onwards. It also announced plans to take on $7.7bn worth of debt financing just as fears of an economic slowdown grow.

Elliott cannot block the deal before it closes because the structure of the three-way agreement means it does not require a shareholder vote.

But, as a large investor, the fund could seek to influence how management and the board go about integrating Worldpay into the wider business.

Elliott and Global Payments declined to comment.

Global Payments is among the payment processing companies with legacy technology systems that have been worst hit by competition from software-focused rivals such as Stripe, Adyen and Toast.

As part of a wave of consolidation across the sector in 2019, Global Payments and rivals Fiserv and FIS each struck their own megadeals, spending more than $90bn between them.

But investor sentiment around most of those acquisitions soured, leading several of the deals to be unwound. Fiserv’s $22bn all-stock acquisition of First Data stands out as a rare example of a deal investors welcomed.

Elliott, with $72.7bn of assets under management, is Wall Street’s best-known activist hedge fund, having unveiled high-profile investments at groups including BP and Hewlett Packard Enterprise this year.

The fund, founded by billionaire investor Paul Singer, has invested in a large number of technology stocks, including fintech companies such as PayPal and FIS, according to regulatory filings.

At an investor conference in May, Global Payments’ chief executive Cameron Bready blamed the poor reaction to the Worldpay acquisition on the deal landing in the immediate aftermath of US President Donald Trump’s tariff policy upending markets.

“Certainly it’s not lost on us that the timing, perhaps from a market standpoint, wasn’t ideal,” Bready said.

He added: “There’s not a scenario that I contemplate where we’re not better off by doing this transaction than we were obviously continuing forward with our standalone plan.”

Investors rage over Vietnam’s alleged breach of power contracts

Cuts to renewable energy subsidies risks country’s credibility and power shortages, state utility warns

A dispute between the government of Vietnam and renewable energy developers over subsidies is threatening to disrupt power supplies, a move that could hit manufacturers that have moved to the country in droves from China.

Vietnam has become a critical link in global supply chains in recent years as manufacturers, including Apple, Samsung and Intel, relocated as part of a “China plus one” strategy to hedge their operations against geopolitical risk. But the country’s electricity supply has struggled to keep pace with a boom in demand, leading to blackouts and shortages. 

A government decision to abruptly roll back subsidies for renewable energy from January has hit power producers, cutting payments from Vietnam’s state utility EVN for electricity they supply to the grid. Developers allege this is a breach of contracts signed from 2017 for a period of 20 years.

The cancellation of subsidies “may lead to force majeure, meaning that power plants may have to stop supplying electricity to the national grid, seriously affecting the security of power supply in 2025 and the following years”, EVN warned in a letter in May to Vietnam’s ministry of industry and trade seen by the Financial Times.

In a follow-up letter to the ministry in July, EVN reiterated its concerns about impacts to national power supply, “especially in the coming period when the country sets a high economic growth target”.

In the letters, which have not been previously reported, EVN said lower purchasing prices would restrict the developers’ cash flow, which it warned would result in delayed maintenance, missed loan obligations or even bankruptcies. The letters summarised meetings with foreign investors and submissions from business groups. 

The withdrawal of the subsidies could harm Vietnam’s appeal as a destination for foreign investment, clouding its economic outlook at the same time that it begins grappling with higher US tariffs.

A total of 173 solar and wind projects, built at a cost of $13bn, would be affected by the policy change. Of those, 75 were backed by foreign investors, mainly from south-east Asia including Acen from the Philippines and Thailand’s Super Energy and B Grimm Power.

“They [Vietnam] have demonstrated without a question that the contract from the main offtaker is not reliable,” said a foreign investor in the solar industry who asked to remain anonymous. “There is not a chance in hell of any serious funds being attracted into Vietnam’s power sector.”

EVN warned the ministry that foreign investors could see the policy change as a breach of their power purchasing agreements and take legal action against the state utility, including international arbitration, if Vietnam persists with the reduced subsidies.

“In case of reduced confidence in the stable investment environment in the energy sector, foreign investors as well as capital suppliers will shift their investment to other countries in the region,” EVN wrote in July.

The dispute underscores the challenges to Vietnam as it seeks to rapidly built out infrastructure to serve the expansion of power-hungry manufacturing sector.

In 2023, factories were hit with rolling blackouts in northern Vietnam during the peak summer season, as a drought affected hydropower. The government has since then accelerated development of power generation and transmission lines.

Last year, it also allowed big companies to purchase power directly from producers rather than rely on the grid, and EVN asked users to be economical to avoid shortages.  

The current dispute stems from a 2017 policy under which EVN would buy renewable energy at above-market prices to supply the national grid. The incentives were critical to the rapid expansion of renewables in Vietnam, which now leads south-east Asia in clean energy adoption. 

However, Hanoi decided to scrap the favourable pricing scheme after an audit found some of the projects were missing a certificate showing construction had been completed. Energy developers allege this documentation was not required when the purchase agreements were signed. Since January, producers have been paid as little as half of what they received previously for power.

The utility has aked the ministry to apply the rollback retroactively, but only for the period when producers lacked the inspection documentation. This means investors would have to return part of the funds they received for that period, but not for the rest of the contract. The proposal is intended to avoid lawsuits and safeguard Vietnam’s investment reputation.

More than 40 foreign and Vietnamese companies with a combined capacity of 6.38 gigawatts have petitioned the government to review the decision.

“The current situation poses serious and immediate risks to investor confidence, financial stability, and Vietnam’s long-term energy and climate objectives,” the investor group said in a May letter to the government.  

EVN and the ministry of industry and trade did not respond to requests for comment. Super Energy and Acen declined to comment. B Grimm did not respond to a request for comment.

How a British private equity firm became a $100bn tech success

Hg spent two decades taking Visma to the brink of London’s biggest tech IPO in years. Can it repeat the trick with bigger, newer funds?

When €19bn software group Visma last month chose London as the venue for its future initial public offering, it signalled a success for the UK capital in more ways than one.

The decision was an obvious boost for the UK’s beleaguered capital markets, where IPOs have become vanishingly rare — let alone ones of multibillion-pound tech companies.

However, it was also a milestone for Visma’s British backer, Hg: the London-headquartered private equity firm that has quietly built itself into a specialist software investor and is on track to surpass $100bn in assets under management this month. That is bigger than better-known US buyout rivals such as Advent and Warburg Pincus and cements its position as the second-biggest British private equity group behind CVC.

Hg offers a rare tale of success in the otherwise underwhelming European technology sector. But it has thrived in an era of cheap money and limited competition in Europe from other technology investors. Now, having attracted a deep well of capital, Hg’s dealmakers must prove they can repeat the trick with its bigger, newer funds in a period where the conditions that facilitated its rise no longer hold. 

“They’ve grown up as the pre-eminent software investor in Europe,” said one investor in Hg’s funds. But they noted that selling companies, not buying them, was now the firm’s biggest challenge. “The larger companies get, the harder they become to exit . . . The IPO window has to be open.”

European IPOs have slowed to a trickle over the past three years. Each time dealmakers believe the window of opportunity on the continent’s capital markets is about to reopen, a new hair-trigger abruptly shuts them again. In Frankfurt, IPO hopefuls including Stada and Brainlab pulled their floats at the last minute in recent months. In London, groups raised just £160mn through IPOs in the first half of the year, according to data from Dealogic, the worst showing for the stock exchange in data going back 30 years.

By listing Visma in London, Hg will have to learn to withstand the scrutiny that will come with being the sponsor of one of London’s biggest IPOs in years. That will be all the more intense for the lacklustre performance of recent tech IPOs such as Deliveroo, and the troubled record of some previous private equity-backed offerings, such as Permira’s float of footwear portfolio company Dr Martens.

Hg started out as a more traditional private equity firm, founded in 1990 as Mercury Asset Management and then absorbed into Merrill Lynch Asset Management a few years later. By 2001, when its now senior partner Nic Humphries joined, its partners were newly independent again. But by 2007 when Humphries took over the reins, technology still only accounted for half of the firm’s deals by number.

That was Hg’s sliding doors moment. “We could have chosen to be a multisector, generalist mid-market firm,” Humphries told the Financial Times. But that would have left the firm in “10th or 11th place”, with non-specialist rivals such as EQT and CVC already expanding across Europe. 

Others were starting to follow a similar path: Vista in the US was already leading in software, and Thoma Bravo was switching to focus on the then-niche sector. “It was a huge debate as I was proposing to turn half the firm on its head,” Humphries said. He won, turning Hg into a specialist private equity group and alighting on a strategy that would eventually take it to the threshold of $100bn.

Hg declined to comment on the firm’s fundraising activities. 

It was Humphries who landed almost two decades ago on Visma, the business that would grow into Hg’s defining portfolio company. The Norwegian payroll and accounting software group was battling a takeover attempt from UK-listed enterprise software group Sage, and Hg was Visma’s white-knight acquirer. 

After the traditional private equity hold period of four years, some at Hg pushed for a classic full exit. But Humphries told them, “If this was a Nic Humphries pension fund, I wouldn’t sell one penny.” 

That decision to stay invested in Visma has come to be one of the defining characteristics of Hg: its desire to roll over investments in assets by shuffling them between funds rather than cashing out entirely. Now a commonplace private equity technique, at the time it drew mockery. “Their competitors used to make fun of them,” said one of the firm’s advisers, “saying is this one where Hg sells to Hg?” 

Private equity dealmakers selling assets between their own funds is controversial because of the possible conflict of interest when they are on both the buy- and sell-side. Some fear that they could put their finger on the scales to drive the price higher or lower — whichever suits them best on that deal — to the detriment of fund investors on one side.

Hg has repeatedly reinvested in Visma. Typically some of the old Hg fund and external investors have cashed out stakes to a newer Hg fund and other new, independent backers. 

Multiple Hg fund investors said the involvement of external groups, such as Singapore’s GIC, gave them confidence in the pricing and that they would have been unhappy if Hg had lost out on the upside by exiting Visma too early.

The same fund investors said they kept flocking back to Hg because of its impressive internal rates of return, a measure used by the industry as a proxy for performance.

Between 2008 and 2023, Hg and Thoma Bravo had more funds with first-quartile internal rates of return than other groups studied by research company The Fund Review — although the analysis was based on self-reported and thus incomplete data and does not distinguish between realised and unrealised gains.

Where Hg did encounter pushback from investors was on the amount of cash it was distributing, or more accurately, the lack of it. The Teacher Retirement System of Texas, one of its backers, told Hg about a decade ago that the firm needed to hurry up, and it set about trying to improve its cash distributions to investors — so-called DPI, or distributions relative to paid-in capital.

Most of the British firm’s older active funds, which managed about £7bn at launch, have now distributed at least 2 or 3 times investors’ cash, according to documentation seen by the FT. “They have been phenomenally good at generating DPI,” said one Hg fund investor.

The improvement in Hg’s overall distributions has in part been helped by a clever trick, however. Hg was among the first firms to accelerate distributions by borrowing against some of the assets in their funds, the industry’s use of which has attracted criticism from some investors. 

A partner at Hg said the firm’s borrowing to return cash was “a tactic, not a strategy” to ensure timely distributions, that its use was not premeditated and that “if our broader clients ever really don’t want us to use these, then we won’t — their opinion matters the most here”. They added that the firm would only ever use borrowing to return at most a fifth of originally invested cash.

Borrowing, including from Blue Owl Capital and Carlyle’s AlpInvest, has accounted for around five per cent of the firm’s overall distributions in the past decade. But that shoots up to about half for the proceeds that Hg has sent back to investors so far from its 2020 large-cap fund, according to people familiar with the matter.

That leaves open a question about whether the model that worked so well on Hg’s smaller, older funds still holds at the scale at which the group is now operating.

Hg’s newer funds, launched since 2020, are generally much bigger than its older vehicles, together managing almost £25bn at launch. But it has become harder to inconspicuously source gems than when Hg first started investing in European software.

“There’s no question it’s more competitive today than it was,” said one of the firm’s advisers, with Advent and EQT formidable competitors.

As for selling assets, two Hg funds that started deploying five years ago have returned half or less of investors’ cash. They do not have long left to meet Hg’s ambitious target of returning all invested money before a fund’s fifth birthday, though a person familiar with the firm said it was normal to only start selling assets in a fund’s fourth year and that the target was usually met during year five.

The Visma IPO, expected to take place next year, will mark the start of a new chapter for the firm.

Hg explored an IPO for Visma several times in the past but retreated instead to private recapitalisations. Now, however, with the company potentially too big to keep private, the success of its planned listing will test whether Hg can prosper as one of the world’s biggest private equity firms.

“What began as a regional business has become Europe’s largest private equity-backed software company,” Humphries said of Visma. “This proves our ability to scale as industries transform over decades.

“We have a culture and strategy that positions us at the heart of [the] technology-driven workplace transformation,” he added. “That’s what makes the next 25 years just as exciting as the last.”

Proteins in human body reveal warning signs for Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s

Analysis of large biological dataset uncovers clues that could help detect and combat neurodegenerative conditions

An international probe into the human body’s proteins has revealed new clues about ageing and how to track and treat destructive neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

Research on the largest-ever protein library is helping bring humanity “closer than ever to the day when a diagnosis of Alzheimer’s disease stops being a death sentence”, said billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates, who part-funded the work.  

The findings published in several Nature Medicine papers on Tuesday are part of an escalating effort to combine big biological datasets with artificial intelligence-enhanced analysis to find early predictors that can help detect and combat notoriously hard-to-treat conditions.

Researchers used the data to identify a signature protein — or biomarker — associated with carriers of a genetic variant known to raise the risk of Alzheimer’s. They also examined how levels of proteins that correlate with cognitive function changed with age, and uncovered patterns in protein level changes for various neurodegenerative conditions.

“The most immediately exciting part is that the patterns of protein abnormality that predict neurodegenerative diseases reveal new insights into the biology of how these conditions develop,” said Charles Marshall, a professor of clinical neurology at Queen Mary University of London.

“This paves the way for drug discovery work that could ultimately lead to new treatments,” he said.

The work is part of an initiative set up in 2023 known as the Global Neurodegeneration Proteomics Consortium (GNPC). It brings together research institutions with the backing of Johnson & Johnson and Gates Ventures, the private office of the Microsoft co-founder.

Simon Lovestone, global head of discovery and translational research at the pharmaceuticals company Johnson & Johnson, said that after decades of gradual incremental progress, the field of neurodegeneration was rapidly accelerating.

“The scale and depth of the dataset, combined with harmonised clinical data, make it an extraordinary resource with the potential to transform how we study, detect and treat neurodegenerative diseases,” he said.

The consortium has built a dataset of about 250mn unique protein measurements and 35,000 biosamples from 23 participant groups in the US and Europe, plus other anonymised clinical information. It is being made available to researchers and other interested parties for free online.

Neurodegenerative diseases are estimated to affect over 50mn people worldwide and the number is projected to double by 2050, driven in part by population ageing. Cases of Alzheimer’s, the most common cause of dementia, and Parkinson’s, which affects movement and other faculties, have increased particularly rapidly compared with other conditions.  

The papers highlighted the importance of using large datasets when investigating neurodegenerative diseases, said Amanda Heslegrave, principal research fellow at the UK Dementia Research Institute Biomarker Factory at UCL.

The work exploring the “overlapping biology” between Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s could boost emerging efforts to jointly tackle the conditions, said Simon Stott, research director for Cure Parkinson’s. The charity is partnering with its counterpart Alzheimer’s Research UK to assess drugs that could be mutually beneficial.

“Biomarkers are crucial for improving not only our understanding of the underlying biology of these diseases, but also for our clinical trials that seek to correct them,” Stott said.

“[They] allow us to monitor patients during clinical trials and determine if the experimental drug being tested is having its desired effect.”

Brussels moves to placate Paris over South American trade deal

EU proposes protections for agriculture as it aims to finalise agreement with Mercosur bloc in December

Brussels has drawn up political “safeguards” to appease France’s farming lobby and win Paris’s backing for a trade deal with the Mercosur bloc of South American economies.

The EU is targeting final approval for December of the Mercosur deal, which would create a shared market of 700mn consumers by combining the EU with Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay and Paraguay.

Two decades in the making, the agreement won preliminary assent last December as part of a renewed push in Brussels to diversify its trade partnerships, fuelled by the election of US President Donald Trump and his protectionist worldview.

However, France has said it would oppose the deal, which still needs final approval from the EU’s 27 member states, if it did not include safeguards to ease the concerns of its politically powerful agricultural sector. It threatened to lead a blocking coalition that would oppose a final signature.

That demand for safeguards will be answered in a formal proposal set to be shared with EU capitals, four officials familiar with the negotiations told the Financial Times. This would include a “political protocol” that spells out “circuit breakers” to protect EU producers should imports of some products breach certain limits.

The safeguards would apply to the volume and prices of beef, chicken and sugar, two of the people said, in a sop to Paris that could be used to placate French farmers, who are concerned about unfair competition.

The deal can be blocked by a coalition of four or more EU states representing at least 35 per cent of the EU’s population, which gives oversized importance to the position of France, the EU’s second-largest member.

“There are many member states which are not happy with the agricultural part of the Mercosur agreement. That’s why they need a safeguard clause that is credible,” said one of the people.

Two officials in Mercosur countries told the FT that they were aware of discussions on new agricultural proposals from Brussels related to the agreement but had no details.

The concession to secure France’s support for the deal would enable the commission, which runs trade policy on behalf of the EU’s member states, to formally agree the deal at a summit to mark the end of the Brazilian presidency of Mercosur in December, the officials told the FT.

However, any additional limits on farm exports from Mercosur countries are likely to face strong resistance from South American nations. “We have not seen a proposal but new safeguards would affect the balance of the agreement,” said one senior diplomat from a Mercosur nation. “They can label it however they want but, if it affects trade flows, we would consider it a reopening of the talks.”

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has long championed the Mercosur trade deal with the EU, and tried to convince President Emmanuel Macron during a visit to France last month to drop his country’s opposition.

The commission declined to comment.

France, which has been backed in its criticism of the deal by Poland, Austria and other countries that fear for their agricultural sectors, has claimed it would cause environmental damage and subject EU farmers to unfair competition.

Industry figures show sharp rise in non-payment, despite wholesale prices falling in recent years

Almost one in four British households are late paying their energy bills, according to new figures that shows how families are struggling to pay despite global prices falling over the past two years.

Some 24 per cent of households are currently past their energy bill payment due date, figures compiled by consultancy Baringa show.

This has risen from 18 per cent in December 2024, though is lower than the rate of 29 per cent who were behind in May 2022, after wholesale prices surged in the wake of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

It found that the average debtor who does not have a repayment plan in place owes £1,700. Some 71 per cent of domestic energy debt is from households who do not have repayment plans, while a total of £2.3bn of energy debt is now more than a year overdue, it added.

Baringa’s analysis is based on its access to debt books of seven major energy suppliers covering about half of British households. Partner James Cooper said the debt levels were creating a “downward spiral” for the industry. 

“It’s critical that more urgency and focus is placed on finding solutions to the challenge,” he said. “We need a better balance that both cures the debt challenge and helps prevent further debt build up for households.”

Baringa analysis contrasts with regulator Ofgem’s approach towards the way it calculates energy debt.

Ofgem said it only classed energy debt as payments that were at least 90 days late, rather than a single missed payment. Under its approach, only 6.5 per cent of households were in debt, Ofgem said.

Baringa argued that its approach reflected a more accurate picture of household debt.

The figures are likely to raise alarm about the health of the market several years after the surge in wholesale energy prices, starting in late 2021, that led to the collapse of several suppliers and saw the government eventually step in to offer blanket financial support for households. 

Although government support was gradually unwound as prices eased, typical household energy bills are still hundreds of pounds higher than before the energy crisis.

Energy suppliers have also signed up to tougher rules that dictate when they are allowed to forcibly install pre-payment meters, after a temporary ban imposed following concerns about the targeting of vulnerable people.

Andrew Ward, chief executive of Scottish Power’s household energy supply business, added: “We’re approaching a winter with debts increasing every day and no solution.”

Ofgem allows companies to recoup a level of bad debts from all customers’ energy bills. Baringa’s analysis found average customers are paying £64.67 in their annual energy bills to cover the costs of bad debt, compared with roughly £40 in the summer of 2022. 

Under their code of practice signed in 2023, the industry must not force pre-payment meters on homes with children under two years of age or people with severe health issues. 

Philippe Commaret, UK managing director for EDF, said the policies were “absolutely fair and protections should remain for those who are vulnerable but do not want to pay”. 

But he warned it was “creating loopholes for those who are not vulnerable but do not want to pay, which is increasing everyone else’s bills including for those who really are vulnerable.”

Ofgem said: “We’ve introduced tougher rules to make sure energy companies do more to spot the signs when a customer may be struggling and step in quickly to offer support, including offering affordable payment plans or providing emergency credit to reduce the risk of self-disconnection.”

It added: “We’re working with government and industry on plans to introduce a new debt relief scheme that could serve as a lifeline for millions of households struggling with unmanageable debts and to reform the rules around how people in debt are supported.”