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PARIS, Aug 27 (Reuters) - France faces a particularly perilous annual budget battle in the coming months as political parties jockey for position ahead of next spring's presidential election while increasingly anxious investors look for evidence Paris can ​regain control of its public finances.

The stakes are high. France already has one of the highest deficits in the euro zone, the election frontrunners are ‌hard-left and far-right candidates pushing expensive platforms, and governments have a long history of retreating from reforms in the face of street protests and political pressure.

Political sparks will fly in the coming weeks, even before campaigning heats up for the two-round election on April 18 and May 2, as Prime Minister Sebastien Lecornu's government tries to survive the 2027 budget season in a hung parliament.

Investors who spoke to Reuters said they are bracing for months ​of turbulence, with the budget fight and presidential race feeding off each other to unsettle markets already on edge.

The annual budget cycle has been a source of drama ​since 2024 legislative elections produced no majority, with two of Lecornu's predecessors ousted over failed negotiations.

Political risks come at a challenging time globally, ⁠with borrowing costs from the U.S. to Japan recently hitting multi-decade highs on concern about ever-rising debt loads.

With the presidential race looming, there's no shortage of flashpoints to question France's ability to ​rein in its deficit just as the Treasury prepares to refinance huge COVID-era debts in the coming years.

Lecornu has urged lawmakers to pass a 2027 budget before the election, warning that they ​should not "add budgetary uncertainty to all the others" and that financial markets are also scrutinising the presidential campaign.

He has promised "big savings measures" when the budget bill comes before lawmakers in early October. Finance Minister Roland Lescure has floated freezing part of France's pension spending next year to save money, although other details remain scarce.

Investors have spent the summer repricing French debt for volatility they expect ahead of the election while tension ​in the U.S. Treasuries market has added to the pain for France since U.S. bond moves typically spill over to other major bond markets.

The premium investors demand to hold French 10-year ​bonds over triple-A rated Germany has widened for three straight months, hitting the highest since late 2024 at around 88 basis points .

"I wouldn't be surprised to see those spreads going to 100 bps, and even ‌from 100 ⁠basis points, there's space for them to widen further," said Kevin Thozet of French asset manager Carmignac, which manages roughly €44 billion ($51 billion).

Investor doubts about French politicians' commitment to cutting the deficit have helped push French bond yields above Italy's despite Rome's heavier debt burden.

Credit rating agencies are also due to update their views in the coming weeks, starting on Friday with Fitch, which downgraded France's credit score a year ago to a record-low A+.

Even if the government manages to trim its deficit, it will still need to borrow more in the next five years to refinance ​hundreds of billions of euros in bonds issued ​at rock-bottom rates during the pandemic.

The government ⁠is already struggling to deliver a modest reduction this year - to 5.0% of GDP from 5.1% last year - and parliamentary tensions make a more ambitious 2027 target a tough sell.

"I'm very pessimistic about the ability of either the current president or the next one to deliver the ​structural reforms needed to reduce the fiscal deficit," said Christopher Dembik, senior investment adviser at Swiss private bank Pictet.

Depending on which candidates ​end up running next ⁠year, in four out five scenarios France would see a runoff between hard-left leader Jean-Luc Melenchon and far-right veteran Marine Le Pen, according to a Harris Toluna poll on Monday.

Both represent dramatic policy shifts, with Melenchon calling for debt held by the central bank to be cancelled and Le Pen advocating lowering the retirement age to 60 for some people.

The poll showed Le Pen winning comfortably against all rivals, though ⁠French presidential ​elections have a history of late surprises.

"There's a lot of unknowns, but in general, it seems like they will ​all want to ease fiscal policy. There's nobody coming in on a policy that we need to fix the budget deficit, we need to bring the debt down," said David Zahn, head of European fixed income at Franklin Templeton, ​which manages roughly $1.8 trillion.

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News of a possible take-private sent the stock up ⁠14.7% on August 12, with further momentum since pushing it to around a nine-month high, leaving the company ​with a market value of around $1.7 billion.

On Wednesday Wendy's stock price tumbled more than 14% in after-hours trading in ​reaction to the Trian news.

Trian has concerns about Wendy's performance, including its recent trading price and valuation multiples, as well as its current strategic direction, said the sources who are familiar with the matter but cannot discuss Trian's thinking publicly.

This leaves Trian keeping ​an open mind about its future intentions, the sources added, declining to elaborate further.

A representative for Trian declined ​to comment.

Wendy's did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

SACRIFICING QUALITY

By pulling back on a possible takeover offer, Trian could ‌be offering ⁠new Wendy's Chief Executive Bob Wright time to execute a turnaround plan to address declining sales that cost it the No. 2 spot among big burger chains.

On Monday, Wright issued a rare corporate mea culpa, telling the Wall Street Journal that the chain sacrificed quality to trim costs. He also rolled out a five-point plan to ​revive prospects.

Earlier in August, Wendy's reported ​a drop in quarterly ⁠global sales, lower net income, higher costs and a drop in earnings per share, all of which prompted Wright to say the company is "clearly not performing at (its) potential."

Wright, ​who took the top job in May, is the fourth leader of Dublin, Ohio-headquartered ​Wendy's in ⁠the last three years.

Even as takeover speculation helped support the stock price, Wendy's shares still trade roughly 60% lower than they did five years ago.

Wendy's has had a nearly two-decade-long relationship with Trian, with Trian co-founder Peter May sitting on ⁠its ​board for 18 years. Last year, Bradley Peltz, one of Nelson Peltz's ​sons, joined the nine-person board. Nelson Peltz and another son, Matthew, had previously held board seats.

Trian also mulled taking Wendy's private in 2022 ​and then backed away from such plans in 2023.

Nepal flash flood kills scores, toll set to rise

Hundreds of foreign travellers missing after disaster

Helicopters drop aid, search for survivors

TRISHULI, Nepal/BEIJING, Aug 27 (Reuters) - Nearly 1,500 people including at least 800 foreigners are missing across Nepal and China's Tibet, authorities said on Thursday, after a wall of mud and rock collapsed into a Himalayan river, ​sending catastrophic floods through towns and valleys.

Rescuers in Nepal used helicopters to search for survivors and drop emergency supplies to thousands cut off after Wednesday's disaster swept a rugged ‌mountainous region thronged by trekkers and pilgrims linking Lhasa in Tibet with the Nepalese capital of Kathmandu. Police said they expected the death toll to rise beyond 165.

"This will go up, as we have resumed the search and more bodies are expected to be recovered," police spokesperson Abi Narayan Kafle told Reuters.

Almost 600 foreigners were among 826 people missing in Nepal, police and tourism officials said.

Among the missing tourists from more than two dozen countries, 177 were from India, 63 were from the United States, ​34 from Australia, 33 from Britain and 25 from Canada.

The tally of missing in Tibet's Gyirong county was 558, Chinese state broadcaster CCTV said on Thursday, including 260 foreign nationals.

Verified videos showed crushing ​masses of water and debris sweeping away dozens of people at a border crossing in Gyirong, with homes, roads and power projects washed away further downstream ⁠in Nepal.

"It was a huge gush of mud coming straight towards us," said Keshav Prasad Baral, a 68-year-old survivor being treated in hospital.

"As it got closer, it kept rising higher and higher. When I saw it ​enter our home, I tried to grab my wife's hand and take her to the terrace. But she was swept away by the mud."

A helicopter ferried him to safety four hours later. "My wife is still somewhere beneath ​the mud," he added. "She's gone."

Another survivor said he saved himself by clinging to a mango tree as he watched the house where he had been working disappear.

EMERGENCY DELIVERIES BEGIN

In the hardest-hit districts, helicopters are dropping tents, food and other emergency supplies provided by neighbouring India, said Raja Ram Basnet, a spokesperson for Nepal's army. More than 5,000 army and police rescue personnel were mobilised to look for survivors and find bodies.

Early reports from Nepali officials suggested an earthquake in the area ​could have caused the lower part of a glacier to collapse and trigger the floods.

The U.S. Geological Survey said an earthquake with magnitude initially reported as 4.4 was in fact seismic energy generated by the collapse of ​glacial rock and ice, followed by debris flow.

Chinese authorities have identified risks from a still-dammed lake located in Gyirong, upstream from the mudslide and flood-stricken Tibet-Nepal border crossing that could significantly complicate rescue efforts in the mountainous site, CCTV reported ‌on Thursday.

Many of ⁠the victims were making a pilgrimage to Kailash Mansarovar, a high-altitude site in Tibet revered by Hindus and Buddhists among others.

Mount Kailash, which Hindus believe to be the abode of Lord Shiva, lies on the banks of Lake Mansarovar, also held sacred in various religions.

The U.S. State Department said it was sending a disaster response adviser and providing assistance of $500,000.

Canada was also closely following the situation, Prime Minister Mark Carney said on X, describing the floods as "absolutely devastating".

U.N. teams and partners were sending supplies and personnel to support affected Nepali communities, Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said details on the disaster were scant.

"Nepal ... is a developing country," he ​said. "It doesn’t have the resources that an event like ​that would have in Australia, so information is ⁠difficult."

Sagar Pandey, the chief executive of a Himalayan tourism operator, said 15 Indian-Australians on a pilgrimage tour with the company were missing.

"There are no human-made things, no human settlement left. Everything is just flat," he told Reuters after flying over the zone in a helicopter. "So anyone in the hotel, the restaurant, or the car, I ​believe that everybody is gone."

VIDEOS SHOW PEOPLE SWEPT AWAY WHILE FLEEING

Security footage captured on the Chinese side of the border showed many people fleeing from a ​torrent of rock, mud and ⁠water that destroyed buildings and vehicles.

People seeking information about family members missing from the affected areas of Nuwakot and Dhading gathered outside a Nepali army training centre that was the base for helicopter rescue operations, the images showed.

In the affected areas, layers of mud metres thick swathed homes, trees and vehicles. Helicopters ferrying survivors hovered overhead all day.

An initial study of Planet Labs satellite imagery showed a landslide of ice and rock unleashed a flood carrying debris in ⁠the Lhende River, ​about 20 km (12 miles) northeast of the Nepal-China Rasuwagadhi border crossing, Nepal disaster management officials said on X.

Television images showed collapsed ​homes, floating cars and a metal bridge being washed away, while witnesses said the waters engulfed entire villages.

"There is devastation everywhere we look," said Tula Bahadur BK, a health worker in Rasuwa.

"The settlements next to the river have been completely swept away. Five of my ​own relatives are missing.

Reporting by Gopal Sharma, Sahana Bajracharya, Aftab Ahmed, Liz Lee, Yukun Zhang, Xiuhao Chen, Shi Bu, Sakshi Dayal, Kanjyik Ghosh, Jatindra Dash and Christine Chen; Editing by Stephen Coates, Clarence Fernandez and Saad Sayeed

Miami’s Wealthy Are Beating the Traffic With Helipads and Private Docks

Rooftop helipads and deepwater docks have become prized amenities in the South Florida city, which ranks as one of America’s most traffic-congested cities

When Ravi Sanganeria was shopping for a Miami condo, standard luxury amenities were an afterthought. The deciding factor was a logistical requirement: seamless access by air and sea.

He walked away from deposits on two local towers to buy a 3,000-square-foot, four-bedroom unit at Villa Miami on Biscayne Bay. Slated to open in 2027, the tower’s residences start at more than $2,000 per square foot. “I went with Villa Miami because of the helipad and boat dock,” he says.

Sanganeria, 51, a perfumer and food flavorist who primarily lives among multiple European residences, says a helicopter will allow him to reach his Florida business sites in 20 or 30 minutes instead of driving three to four hours. Marine access will cut his weekend commute to his Bahamas home to just two hours by boat. “Time is money,” he says.

Sanganeria’s mindset reflects a shift in Miami’s luxury-housing landscape. Driven by a postpandemic influx of ultra-high-net-worth buyers, developers are building multimodal towers with transit options that bypass increasingly congested streets. In 2025, Miami was the fifth most traffic-congested city in the U.S., according to location technology firm TomTom.

Real-estate and helicopter experts say high land costs, noise issues and airspace limits make ground helipads a hard sell, pushing landing pads to high-rise rooftops, which can provide large landing surfaces in areas where noise more naturally disperses.

Given Miami’s scarcity of public helipads, Douglas Elliman’s Jay Phillip Parker says alternative transit infrastructure has become an valuable residential draw. He wouldn’t be surprised if people are buying into buildings just for helipad access. “They might not even live there,” he says.

One of Villa Miami’s developers, One Thousand Group, launched the recent condo rooftop helipad trend with One Thousand Museum, a Zaha Hadid-designed tower that opened in 2019. The pad averages 60 flights a year. One of the group’s co-founders, Louis Birdman, says the firm is doubling down on an air-and-sea strategy across its pipeline, including Villa Miami and Biscayne Bay’s forthcoming Anantara Residences Miami.

One Thousand Museum residents rely heavily on charters like Helijet Solutions, which sells charter cards starting around $3,300 per hour on larger aircraft. Helijet founder and helicopter pilot Darren Rothell says frequent trips include 25-minute hops to Palm Beach—bypassing a roughly 2½ hour rush-hour drive—and transit to private aviation hubs, golf clubs, the Keys and Dolphins games. Helijet says Miami flights have increased 25% to 30% since 2020.

Other buyers give priority to the water, as boating has evolved into practical transit. Central to this shift is the Miami River, which has become a commercial and entertainment corridor with a dock-and-dine culture. On the river, the upcoming Faena Residences Miami—slated to open in late 2029, with residences starting at more than $1,800 per square foot—will offer private dockage, a 100-foot-long captained house yacht and Venice-style water taxis ferrying residents to waterfront dining.

“I’m in the middle of purchasing a new car, but I’m thinking: ‘Do I need another car? I’ll be mostly on the boat now,’” says Christian Alexander, 37, a retired business owner who purchased multiple units at Faena and plans to slip his roughly 88-foot Wallywhy200 yacht there for regular hops around the city. Among the units he purchased is a 3,181 square foot residence with four bedrooms and four bathrooms. Unit types in this collection start around $6.999 million.

As condo developers engineer water-transit hubs, single-family home buyers are scaling up their own waterfront footprints in the age of bigger, better boats. “One-hundred linear feet on the water used to be enough to seal the deal for many luxury buyers,” says Eddy Martinez of ONE Sotheby’s International Realty. “Now we’re getting people that want a minimum of 150 feet.”

“I’ve worked with buyers who won’t look at a property if it doesn’t have the right dockage,” says Jill Eber of Coldwell Banker’s the Jills Zeder Group. She and her colleague Judy Zeder currently represent a $237 million Key Biscayne listing—President Richard Nixon’s former Winter White House—which has a marina that can accommodate a 200-foot yacht.

The listing also has a rare private helipad, as single-family buyers face municipal hurdles for air access. “If it were possible to put helicopter landing pads at single-family homes throughout the city, I’m sure you’d have them everywhere,” says Eber’s colleague Judy Zeder. To adapt, boats are now serving as a link to the sky. “Some people come and go via a floating helipad on the water, then take a boat to their homes,” says Compass real-estate agent Nancy Batchelor.

Multimodal demands extend beyond Miami. “We see it in Fort Lauderdale and Palm Beach,” says Douglas Elliman’s Parker, noting that the Miami-to-Palm Beach region is rapidly transforming into one unified corridor connected by air and sea.

Looking ahead, developers view these amenities as foundational. One Thousand Group is already engineering rooftops for electric vertical takeoff and landing aircraft, commonly known as electric air taxis. “In the future, there will be air taxis, flying cars, or drone deliveries landing on helipads,” he says.

Trippy innovator of the avant-garde scene in 1960s New York, Kusama achieved longevity with selfie-worthy immersive environments

Japanese contemporary artist Yayoi Kusama, whose renowned work made her the most-expensive female artist, has died. She was 97 years old.

Her death was announced in a statement by the Yayoi Kusama Museum in Tokyo and the Yayoi Kusama Foundation. The statement said she died on Aug. 14 in a Tokyo hospital.

“She continued to paint until her final days, never setting aside her brush, and remained steadfast in her lifelong belief that love can save the world,” the statement said.

Kusama lived by choice in a Tokyo psychiatric hospital since 1977, but the paintings, sculptures, installations and fashion designs she created from her nearby studio have been shown around the world. She is best known for her monochromatic abstract paintings evoking fishing nets, and for canvases and large spaces covered with polka dots, evoking hallucinations she had as a child.

Her Infinity Mirror Rooms, first exhibited in New York, create mind-bending illusions of endless space through reflection and light. They have attracted millions of viewers and are popular on Instagram.

But for Kusama, art wasn’t a path chosen for fame and fortune; art was a sublimation and a salve for her compulsive tendencies and psychotic episodes. “I transformed my trauma into art,” she said in “Kusama: Infinity,” a 2018 documentary. “I convert the energy of life into dots of the universe.”

Initially discouraged from art by her conservative family and ignored by the art establishment, Kusama’s popularity surged in recent decades as curators reassessed her influence on postwar Pop art, which rivals that of contemporaries such as Andy Warhol and Claes Oldenburg.

Hailed as a trippy, innovative member of New York’s 1960s avant-garde scene, Kusama was prescient in creating selfie-worthy immersive environments, one of which is permanently displayed at the Broad Museum in Los Angeles. Dozens of other museums own her work, including New York’s Museum of Modern Art and Tokyo’s Museum of Contemporary Art.

During a 2017 exhibit of her mirrored installations at Washington’s Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, visitors with timed tickets stood in hourslong lines to spend a few seconds in each of her rooms. Director Melissa Chiu said the exhibit helped the museum attract 1.2 million visitors that year, doubling its annual attendance.

“People used to sideline her mirrored installations,” Chiu said, “but they give people a chance to step into her infinity. Somehow she became a phenomenon.”

Her gender and ethnicity once arguably worked against Kusama achieving clout in the art world in the early years of her work, but they eventually turned into major selling points. Spurred by wealthy Asian collectors, in 2014 Kusama became the most-expensive living female artist when her 1960 painting “White No. 28,” a monochromatic infinity net, sold at Christie’s New York for $7.1 million. She topped her own record in April 2019 when a 1959 piece from the same series, “Interminable Net No. 4,” sold for $8 million at Sotheby’s Hong Kong. She still holds the title, though it’s a far cry from the $91.1 million paid at auction for Jeff Koons’s sculpture, “Rabbit.”

To market herself, Kusama adopted an outlandish persona, donning brightly colored bobbed wigs, and red leotards or dot-covered gowns for public appearances. In 2012, Louis Vuitton unveiled a collection of handbags and attire designed by Kusama that was characterized by her audacious dots. Still, her rise to fame was hard won.

She was born on March 22, 1929, in Matsumoto, a city in Japan’s central Nagano prefecture. The youngest of four children, Kusama grew up in a family that farmed its vast land holdings and sold seeds for fruits, vegetables and flowers. She once recalled wandering into a flowery field and becoming disoriented among the seemingly endless stalks and blooms—a sensation she likened to “obliteration” and would seek to re-create in her art. Dots surfaced in her childhood hallucinations, she said, and they played a dominant role in her work.

Her mother wasn’t an admirer of the art Kusama started creating at around age 10, and she often snatched away her paintings. “She once kicked my palette across the room,” Kusama wrote in her 2002 autobiography, “Infinity Net.” As a result, she said she learned early on to draw at a feverish pace, and she remained prolific throughout her life. Even into her 80s, she could finish a wall-size drawing in about three days.

Her mother ultimately relented and let her daughter attend art school, but Kusama ached to stretch beyond the country’s traditional Nihonga painting style. In 1955, she wrote to artist Georgia O’Keeffe for advice on how to navigate the “hard life” of a painter. O’Keeffe replied that she should move to New York. Kusama moved to Seattle in 1957, and a year later moved to New York.

Even without the ornate, embroidered kimonos she initially wore to New York’s downtown gallery openings, Kusama would have stood out—an ambitious Asian woman jockeying for attention in an art world that lionized mainly white men. She dated artist Joseph Cornell and befriended other artists such as Donald Judd and Eva Hesse. The first gallery willing to show her paintings was the artist-run Brata Gallery in 1961.

Kusama said many of her experiments in the 1960s met with indifference or, worse, imitators. Turning back to her work in a parachute factory during World War II, she started sewing soft, stuffed fabric sculptures shaped like phalluses and attaching them to sofas, shirts and ladders all painted white—a profusion of bristling sensuality that belied her fear of intimacy, she said.

Green Gallery included one of these pieces, an armchair called “Accumulation No. 1,” in a group show in June 1962 alongside Pop pioneers such as Oldenburg. At that point, Oldenburg was better known for making papier-mâché versions of everyday items like shirts and slices of cake, but a few months later in the same gallery, he debuted a series of everyday objects sewn from fabric, which skyrocketed him to international fame.

Oldenburg later said in an interview that their works differed in that Kusama relied on objects in a single, repeated shape, whereas his soft sculptures represented true-to-life objects.

Artist Lucas Samaras earned raves in 1965 for constructing a room whose inner walls were lined with mirrors; a few months earlier, Kusama’s “Infinity Mirror Room (Phalli’s Field)” show had featured a mirror-lined room covered in stuffed, polka-dot forms. Another echo occurred the following year when she papered her gallery’s wall in images of boats, and shortly after Warhol followed suit with silk-screen images of cows.

The artistic pas de deux took a toll on Kusama’s mental health, sending her into periods of depression. So did the Vietnam War, against which she staged naked protests and happenings that made the cover of the New York Daily News in 1969 and caused a scandal in Japan after newspapers reported on her actions.

After attempting to kill herself, Kusama moved back to Japan in 1973. Instead of getting a hero’s welcome in Tokyo, she spent years being dismissed like a hippie pariah. In 1977, she checked herself into a hospital that championed art therapy and created a series of somber, primordial collages featuring birds, bugs and Bosch-like imagery, including a work titled “I Who Committed Suicide.”

Her comeback began when the Center for International Contemporary Art in New York held a retrospective of her work in 1989. That was followed by an invitation to install her work inside the Japanese pavilion of the 1993 Venice Biennale. Among her works was a room painted yellow and covered in black dots; she wore an outfit to match. Audiences were charmed.

As her success blossomed, Kusama’s fiberglass sculptures of flowers and pumpkins got bigger, her palette brightened and her installations became more kaleidoscopic. Reviewing her 2017 show at the Hirshhorn, Wall Street Journal critic Richard B. Woodward said he admired how her late work felt optimistic, but added, “At the risk of being a killjoy, I only wish it weren’t so increasingly facile and crudely euphoric.”

Kusama received validation back in Japan, where the Matsumoto City Museum of Art exhibited her work, calling her a “genius.” In 2017, her namesake foundation opened the Yayoi Kusama Museum for her art in Tokyo near her home and studio.

“I don’t usually have a fixed idea of what I want to do and don’t know how the painting will turn out. Countless ideas come into my head,” Kusama once told the Journal. “Once I begin painting, though, the image becomes clear. And when it’s finished, I realize that this is the painting that I’ve been trying to make.”

Thames Water creditors and government in stand-off over future

Investors want clarity over potential nationalisation but ministers insist no decision is imminent

Thames Water’s creditors are at an impasse with the UK government, with lenders demanding Andy Burnham clarify any potential renationalisation before they plough in another £2bn needed as soon as October to keep the beleaguered utility afloat.

The new prime minister has previously called for Thames Water to be taken into public ownership but has not set out any concrete plans to do so. 

Burnham is now expected to shelve a decision on the future of the UK’s biggest water company until as late as the end of October, leaving the government in a stand-off with Thames Water’s creditors, which include distressed debt funds Elliott Management and Silver Point Capital. 

Their rescue plan for Thames Water, which provides essential water and sewerage services to 16mn people in London and the South East, is being assessed by the sector regulator, Ofwat.

Thames Water is already being propped up by an expensive £3bn loan, which is set to run out by December. The additional £2bn loan may need to be sanctioned in the courts, which could take several weeks.

People close to the creditors, known as the London & Valley Water Consortium, said they would need an indication that the government was still committed to a “market solution” before they would make the additional emergency financing available. 

Reassurances sought by the creditors could include Ofwat putting their plan — which is backed by Thames Water’s leadership — out for public consultation or simply engaging further with the group, according to people familiar with discussions. 

The creditors are yet to meet Angela Eagle, the new environment secretary, and several investors in the group are understood to be impatient for a deal, which would see them formally take over the utility within months and then potentially relist the company on the stock market by 2030.

Burnham is still mulling a temporary renationalisation under the government’s special administration regime, or SAR.

Creditors include more than 100 financial institutions, which are set to make heavy losses if Thames Water is pushed into SAR.

Their spokesperson said: “While we continue to work with government towards a solution, Thames Water’s ongoing funding needs are kept under close review, and any creditor vote in relation to meeting those needs will necessarily reflect confidence that a long-term solution can be achieved.”

To pursue a SAR the government or Thames Water would have to apply to the High Court on the grounds that the company was insolvent or had breached environmental obligations.

This means Burnham may be better off waiting until it runs out of cash to reduce the chance of successful legal claims.

“There are loads of advantages in letting the company go first as the government hasn’t therefore taken precipitative action and therefore cannot be challenged on that act,” said one lawyer close to the discussions.

Another alternative for the government is to use legislation to bypass the usual procedures, as ministers did to nationalise British Steel. 

Allies of the prime minister said that he had never planned to push the company into state control immediately. “A Thames Water SAR was never imminent,” said one official.

However, other government insiders admitted that the SAR process had proved “more complicated” than Burnham expected and that a range of options for the company was being drawn up before the Budget on October 28. 

Even then they said it was not clear whether a final decision would be taken by the time chancellor John Healey delivers his first financial statement.

If Thames Water entered the SAR, its debt payments and interest would be frozen, freeing up additional cash from customer bills for investment in infrastructure. 

Creditors would have a right to be bought out for a court-mandated “appropriate value”.

If Thames Water were to be eventually resold out of the SAR, the government is expected to recoup any additional cash invested in the business, meaning that it is unlikely to cost the government anything, according to lawyers close to the discussions and Thames Water’s own advisers.

Thames Water said: “We continue to enjoy the support of our creditors. We are working constructively to reach an agreement that supports its long-term financial stability.”

How Europe’s top train maker is trying to get back on track

France’s Alstom is choosing a smaller number of new projects after most recent profits warning

When Spain’s rail operator launched a contest to build up to 40 new trains capable of running at 350km an hour, Europe’s top manufacturer was absent from the line-up.

Alstom, the world’s second-biggest train maker famous for its high-speed TGV, confirmed it had not lodged an offer by the June deadline set by Renfe. Alstom decided the delivery deadline of just over three years was too tight and the speed goals for the new trains were too ambitious, according to two people familiar with the matter. 

But its decision not to bid for a contract worth an estimated €1.8bn was unusual — and a sign of the complexities of securing big rail contracts.

High-value train projects can take many months, sometimes years, to be awarded to train manufacturers that must nevertheless commit to multiyear vehicle delivery timelines and prices. Specifications often change along the way and safety and regulatory approvals can be arduous.

Those conditions in turn put pressure on balance sheets driven by large capital requirements, working capital swings and lumpy payment schedules.

Martin Sion, who took over as Alstom chief executive in April, is trying a fresh approach to tackle some of these thorny issues. He began his tenure by prioritising a smaller number of new manufacturing projects to focus on profitability, cash and ironing out execution problems on existing contracts.

But Alstom’s Paris-listed shares have roughly halved since touching €30 earlier this year. In April, the group issued its third profit warning in five years, just after Sion’s arrival. It also dropped a cash-generation target.

Alstom’s withdrawal from the Renfe tender also provides a glimpse into an industry that regularly draws criticism from politicians and the media for delays in deliveries.

“In Europe every quayside has a different height, tunnels are different in every country, even the voltage on the tracks is not the same,” said one of the people.

William Mackie, head of capital goods research at Kepler Cheuvreux, said such characteristics set the train industry apart. “The airline industry is very homogenised. You don’t find that in the same way in rail,” he said. 

Capital intensive contract delays are particularly tough for the cash positions of train makers, given final payments only occur after trains are tested on networks for months. Late deliveries trigger financial penalties.

The near-century-old Alstom, also known for making trains for Eurostar and the London Underground, is still benefiting from strong demand from rail networks.

Big new contracts included suburban trains in Australia, intercity ones in Portugal and Poland, and a new fleet for commuters travelling between New York and Philadelphia.

But while Alstom’s total order book was worth €103bn on June 30, the end of its first quarter, new orders were down nearly 40 per cent in that quarter compared to a year earlier.

“Life is difficult when you’re listed and have to pitch for projects that you’re awarded six months later and you commit to timelines and prices that you then build over a decade — and you have to guide financial markets,” said one Paris banker.

Analysts and rail executives said some of Alstom’s problems were self-inflicted. The €5.5bn acquisition of Canadian rival Bombardier in 2021 created overlaps it may still have to tackle with cutbacks, they said. Alstom has taken more than €1bn in provisions and adjustments on contracts inherited from Bombardier.

Alstom’s market value now languishes at under €8bn, compared to €17.6bn months after the Bombardier deal was completed.

Officials at the group acknowledge it needed to better manage deliveries and costs, although one former insider said many attempts had been made before. 

“We need . . . greater discipline in steering our projects, more predictability in our deliveries and more simplicity in the way we operate,” Sion, who joined from space-rocket maker ArianeGroup, told shareholders in July.

At the shareholders’ meeting, investors voted against an exit payment of €1.3mn for recently departed chief executive Henri Poupart-Lafarge.

Criticism from clients can also be harsh.

In July, French President Emmanuel Macron’s former prime minister Jean Castex, who now runs state-owned operator SNCF, took a veiled swipe at Alstom. 

“My biggest problem today is not that we’re opening up the train market to competition, it’s the lack of trains,” Castex told a conference. “If there are manufacturers in the room that I will not name — hurry up and deliver!”

Among major contracts, Alstom won a €3bn deal in 2018 for 100 next-generation French double-decker TGV trains, which are being updated to fit 200 more passengers.

The first were due to be operational during the 2024 Paris Olympics. They should now start after the summer, two years later, following multiple issues with approvals, supplier delays and testing phases. 

Such difficulties are widespread, affecting rivals from Stadler to CAF, Siemens Mobility to Talgo, and would also be challenging for China’s CRRC, the world’s biggest train maker, were it to attack Europe’s train market.

All four European train makers alongside Alstom had profit margins of under 10 per cent in their 2025 financial years.

Meanwhile, a small group of national operators, such as SNCF and Renfe, as well as Italy’s Trenitalia and Germany’s Deutsche Bahn, hold significant sway. 

“They can almost dictate how it’s going to be. They negotiate very hard with their suppliers on payment terms and delivery terms and conditions,” Mackie at Kepler Cheuvreux said.

Another factor hitting margins is that in France, for instance, the SNCF does most of its own train maintenance, limiting Alstom’s ability to undertake such high-value work.

Investors had been warned that big performance improvements could take time, in an industry “whose practices lead to delays”, Sion told shareholders back in July.

“There is no magical recipe,” he said.

Cinema software group explores London listing

Manchester-based Unique X could command a valuation of £300mn in IPO next year

A cinema software company whose technology is used by Disney and Warner Bros Discovery is exploring an IPO in London, in a potential boon for the UK market.

Manchester-based Unique X is considering listing in the capital city next year at a valuation of £300mn, according to people familiar with the matter. Cinema chains including Odeon, Vue and Cineplex use the company’s software to manage film showings and schedule trailers, while studios including Warner Bros Discovery, Disney and Universal use its technology to distribute their films to cinemas around the world. 

A new tech company listing would be a much-needed bright spot for the London market, which has suffered from lacklustre IPO volumes in recent years despite several reforms. 

UK politicians and policymakers are urgently trying to encourage businesses to list in London and investors to support them. The government has sought to incentivise listings by making a series of regulatory changes, including providing a stamp duty holiday for new IPOs and lowering free-float requirements to allow company founders to keep more of their stakes.

Downing Street last month asked private equity bosses why they were not floating their portfolio companies in the UK, the FT reported, in a sign of the government’s concern about the situation. Just seven companies listed in the UK in the first half of this year, raising £577mn. In the first half of last year, nine companies listed in London, raising £183mn in total.

Meanwhile, a record number of British companies are being acquired by overseas buyers, underscoring strong investor demand for what they consider to be undervalued businesses. 

Unique X was founded in Norway in 1997 and has grown to deliver more than 1.1bn cinema advertising spots and software to over 40,000 cinema screens across the world. European investment firm Kartesia invested $80mn in the company in 2024 at an undisclosed valuation. The company’s founder Chris Hagan retained 85 per cent ownership of the business, Unique X said at the time. 

Unique X would raise £100mn through a London listing, one of the people said, at a roughly £300mn valuation, adding that “probably 60 per cent of the films you’ve seen” use its technology in some capacity. The company is also exploring other options such as a sale, while timings could change, they cautioned.

UniqueX did not respond to requests for comment. Kartesia declined to comment.

Several anticipated UK listings have been delayed despite hopes that regulatory changes and government enthusiasm would drive a revival of the IPO market. High street retailer Superdrug is weighing pushing back its planned IPO until next year, the FT reported, while bookstore owner Waterstones has not yet set a date for its expected listing.