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Monday newspaper round-up: Scottish Power, South East Water, Elon Musk

Mon 19 January 2026 07:21 | A A A

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(Sharecast News) - Scottish Power has been ranked Britain's worst energy supplier for customer service in a survey from a leading consumer body that placed many of the UK's biggest suppliers at the bottom of the league table. British Gas and EDF Energy were just above Scottish Power at the foot of the annual Which? rankings. These are based on a satisfaction survey of almost 12,000 energy customers and a Which? assessment of each supplier's customer service. - Guardian

Thousands of residents across Kent are still dealing with water supply issues after yet more outages from the under-fire operator, South East Water. The water supply of more than 5,500 households was affected on Sunday evening due to a treatment works fault, a power outage and two burst mains. A major incident was declared earlier this week when 30,000 homes in Kent and Sussex were left without water for days. South East Water has faced heavy criticism from MPs and the public after a similar outage before Christmas left 24,000 people in Tunbridge Wells without drinking water for two weeks. - Guardian

Rachel Reeves is preparing to inject tens of millions of pounds into an Oxford self-driving car pioneer as Labour gets ready to unleash autonomous vehicles on Britain's roads. The 28bn National Wealth Fund (NWF), which is backed by the Treasury, is nearing a deal to plough taxpayer cash into Oxa, the driverless car start-up founded by experts from Oxford University. - Telegraph

Elon Musk is seeking damages of up to $134 billion from OpenAI and its long-time backer Microsoft, claiming he deserves the "wrongful gains" both companies received from his early support. In a federal court filing on Friday, Musk's lawyer claimed the ChatGPT owner gained between $65.5 billion and $109.4 billion from Musk's contributions when he co-founded OpenAI with its chief executive Sam Altman in 2015, while Microsoft, which has a 27 per cent stake in OpenAI, gained between $13.3 billion and $25.1 billion. - The Times

A government-backed campaign to kickstart retail investment in corporate bonds is to be launched on Monday with the introduction of a kitemark system set up to reassure novice investors. Direct investment in the bonds by individuals has collapsed in recent years after EU rules effectively prevented any single investment of less than 100,000. That floor has now been scrapped, allowing bond transactions to start at as little as 1. - The Times

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