Good morning.
Shell has been fined for overcharging some households for their energy bills in a move that is likely to spark a political backlash from the energy majors.
Shell Energy Retail will pay £537,000 to charge more than 11,000 price-capped customers from early 2019.
The total amount to be refunded to customers is £106,000, while Shell will also pay £400,000 to Ofgem’s voluntary consumer redress fund and £30,970 in goodwill payments to affected customers.
The blunder comes as British households face rising energy bills, with Ofgem expected to announce another jump in the price cap to above £3,500 tomorrow.
Meanwhile, Shell posted a record profit of $11.5bn (£9.7bn) in the second quarter alone as it profited from a boom in wholesale oil and gas prices.
5 things to start the day
1) How Natural Gas Traders Hit the Jackpot Rising energy prices are making a select group of speculators rich beyond their wildest dreams
2) Covid-style bailouts for energy bills seen as Government warned of civil unrest Urgent help to stop crisis destroying sectors of economy
3) Hospitals, farms and factories at risk of CO2 shortages as last major plant halts production Carbon dioxide supply to dwindle as CF Industries shuts down last Gran fertilizer plant brittany
4) Atom Bank rushes to defend four-day work week Challenger bank believes pilot is ‘the future of working life’
5) Nicola Sturgeon’s loan bill to be lower than England’s for first time in decade Scotland’s falling deficit could boost SNP ahead of second independence referendum
What happened during the night
Tokyo stocks opened higher this morning, with the benchmark Nikkei 225 up 0.2% and the broader Topix also up 0.2%.
Mainland Chinese stocks also opened with gains. The Shanghai Composite Index and the Shenzhen Composite Index of China’s second bourse rose 0.3%.
It arrives today
- Corporate: Hays (annual results); Amigo Holdings, CRH, Grafton Group, Harbor Energy, Hunting, Macfarlane Group, Puretech Health (interim)
- Economy: GDP (US, Germany), Jackson Hole Symposium (US), core personal consumption expenditures (US), unemployment claims (US)