It is widely accepted that the UK government’s “eat out to help out” policy added to the spread of Covid-19 during the summer of 2020.
New analysis reveals that it added to air pollution, too, at a time when the public was urged to minimise air pollution to protect vulnerable people shielding or isolating with Covid.
“Eat out to help out” was designed to reboot the hospitality sector by subsidising restaurant and pub meals. It operated for three days a week in August 2020.
Dr Ian Chen, from Imperial College London, was analysing data from the research monitoring site in London’s Marylebone Road when he first noticed unusual air pollution peaks: “I was trying to understand how the Covid lockdown affected pollution in central London. At first, I thought traffic was the obvious explanation.”
Looking in more detail, Chen saw that soot from diesel exhaust was lower than the previous August, suggesting changes to traffic were not the cause.
The chemical fingerprints of the particles provided the first explanation. They contained fatty acids from cooking, but their timings did not match the usual pattern of lunch, evenings and weekends.
Instead, the pollution peaks happened each evening Monday to Wednesday, when the “eat out to help out” scheme operated. Bank holiday Monday, at the end of August, had the biggest peak of all.
It did not stop there. The pattern continued through September and into October, suggesting that the policy had an influence on consumer behaviour and air pollution after it ended.
There was another pollution source on those summer evenings. It contained chemicals that are normally seen from wood stoves in winter, but it was August and warm. Chen said: “We normally only detect the emissions from frying food, but here we were able to link these with cooking fuels, like wood and charcoal. This was the hardest part of the project and had never been observed before.”
Commercial cooking is generally overlooked in actions to control air pollution despite it having been identified as a source of air pollution in London and Manchester about 15 years ago. About 8% of the particle pollution emitted in London is thought to come from commercial cooking, but this may be greater if the pollution from wood and charcoal fuels is included.
Dr David Green, also from Imperial College London, said: “Our study marks an important step in understanding how commercial cooking affects particle pollution in our cities. While we don’t yet know which restaurants are the most polluting, we do know enough for regulators to begin to treat commercial kitchens as a significant, and solvable, source of urban air pollution.”
In 2018, a study in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, found that particle pollution from restaurants can spread hundreds of metres into residential areas and can be greater than that from major roads. Air pollution from airline catering at Gatwick has also been detected in countryside about 500 metres away.
Chen said: “As we reduce vehicle and other emissions in urban environments across Europe, commercial cooking is becoming the most important primary source of particle pollution and yet there is little regulation in place. Technologies which remove the particles and gases can effectively reduce these emissions – these are required by law in Hong Kong.”
Subject: TDK Taiwan Corporation hereby announces its plan to transfer part of its business to Actutek Corporation by way of a company division to take effect on January 1, 2026 (or such other date as may be separately announced by TDK Taiwan Corporation).
Pursuant to Article 35, Paragraph 6 of Business Mergers and Acquisitions Act
1. TDK Taiwan Corporation (the “Company”) has resolved to carry out a company division to take effect on January 1, 2026 (or such other date as may be separately announced by the Company, hereinafter referred to as the “Effective Date of Division”). Under the division, the RM Department of its “Camera Module Actuator Solutions” (“MAS Business”) will be transferred to Actutek Corporation (“Actutek”), a wholly owned subsidiary of the Company. Following the division, the Company plans to transfer all of its shares in Actutek to Q Tech Group (“Q Tech”). As a result of the division, Actutek shall, in accordance with applicable law, comprehensively succeed to all rights and obligations of the RM Department of the Company existing as of the Effective Date of Division.
2. Pursuant to Article 35, Paragraph 6 of the Business Mergers and Acquisitions Act, the Company hereby announces that any creditor of the Company having any questions or objections concerning the division shall submit such objections with the contact person listed below within thirty (30) days from the date of this announcement. Any creditor who fails to raise an objection within the said period shall be deemed to have no objection.
3. Following the division, Actutek will continue to operate under the TDK Group and will remain fully supported by the TDK Group, both operationally and financially, until completion of the share transfer. The subsequent sale of Actutek to Q Tech is expected to close by the end of March 2026. Q Tech has expressed its firm commitment to maintaining existing business relationships and ensuring the continued operation of the business without any impact on operations or level of service. Creditors are therefore assured that there is no cause for concern.
4. We sincerely appreciate your trust and support and are committed to ensuring a smooth transition. We believe that this new chapter will create valuable opportunities for all stakeholders involved.
Address: No. 159, Sec. 1, Zhongshan N. Rd., Yangmei Dist., Taoyuan City 326021, Taiwan (ROC.) Email: FuLai.Tseng@tdk.com Contact Person: TDK Taiwan Corporation FuLai Tseng
Tamotsu Aiba President & CEO TDK Taiwan Corporation
Tokyo, November 14, 2025 – Mitsubishi Shipbuilding Co., Ltd., a part of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) Group, delivered the large car ferry KEYAKI, produced for Shin Nihonkai Ferry Co., Ltd. and Japan Railway Construction, Transport and Technology Agency (JRTT), at the Enoura Plant of MHI’s Shimonoseki Shipyard & Machinery Works in Yamaguchi Prefecture on the 11th. The new ferry will serve on a shipping route between the cities of Otaru in Hokkaido and Maizuru in Kyoto Prefecture from the 14th.
The KEYAKI is the first ferry in Japan to adopt the latest energy-saving hull form, including a KATANA BOW and buttock-flow stern hull(Note1) with ducktail(Note2). Propulsion resistance is suppressed by an energy-saving roll-damping system combining an anti-rolling tank(Note3) and fin stabilizers(Note4). Together these innovations enable a 5% savings in energy compared to earlier vessels.
The interior of the ferry features open spaces including a three-story atrium at the entrance, elevators with clear walls and doors, and a forward salon with a two-story atrium. There is an open-air bath on the top deck and a multipurpose room for enjoying a variety of activities. A variety of cabins are available to provide maritime travel experiences that meet various needs.
Going forward, Mitsubishi Shipbuilding will continue to contribute to active use of sea transport and environmental protection, resolving diverse issues together with its business partners through construction of ferries that provide stable sea transport together with outstanding energy and environmental performance.
1A hull design that reduces water resistance by optimizing the shape of the stern.
2A hull form with the stern protruding like a duck’s tail.
3An anti-rolling tank contains water that shifts laterally within a ship’s beam. When a vessel rolls, the tank water moves in the direction opposite to the rolling, easing the rolling effect.
4Fin stabilizers are another device that reduces ship rolling. Attached to both sides of the hull, these movable fins generate lifting power in the water in the direction opposite to the rolling.
Years before the implosion of First Brands sparked huge losses for some of the biggest names on Wall Street, Apollo Global Management endured a less well-publicised fiasco involving a smaller car parts supplier.
Apollo took a hit in 2019 from the collapse of Vari-Form, a chassis and roof rail maker to which its private credit funds had lent more than $130mn.
But rather than taking the loss and moving on, the ordeal gave rise to a new trade idea for the $840bn-in-assets private capital firm. Apollo last year began shorting the debt of a larger business owned by Vari-Form’s sole shareholder, Patrick James: First Brands.
While Apollo was one of the few Wall Street firms to profit from the First Brands debacle, a larger cohort including the family office of investor George Soros identified red flags around James’s sprawling empire and avoided losses by refusing to lend or cutting their exposure.
James now faces accusations of fraud and embezzlement — allegations he denies — and First Brands’ $12bn debt pile is set for hefty writedowns in its bankruptcy.
Some burnt lenders have insisted the collapse came without warning — Brian Friedman, president of First Brands’ longtime banker Jefferies, told investors last month that “fraud is conventionally not detectable in the real world”. But other creditors that dug deeper were able to avoid the fiasco.
Donald Clarke, a veteran of so-called “field examinations” for asset-backed lenders, said serious financial issues at First Brands were “right there in plain sight”. His firm Asset Based Lending Consultants conducted due diligence on First Brands in 2022 on behalf of a private capital firm that was considering extending a $200mn bridging loan to the company.
“The first red flag,” according to Clarke, was First Brands’ refusal to grant him access to one of its storage sites where he wanted to inspect the collateral underpinning the prospective loan. “They said to us, ‘you will not go to the warehouse’,” Clarke said. “Really? we’re going to lend you $200mn but you can’t go see the inventory? I mean, are you kidding me?”
This meant ABLC had to rely on financial statements provided through a data room. Clarke said he soon noticed that the company was “chronically” behind on payments due to its suppliers, which had shut down many of its open credit facilities in favour of cash on delivery, cash in advance or letters of credit, and that the money it owed them had shot up. When his team tried to speak to someone at First Brands about it, he added, the conversation kept getting delayed.
The fact First Brands had needed a $200mn loan also seemed bizarre, Clarke recalled, given it had recently disclosed holding more than $800mn of cash. In audited annual accounts for 2021, First Brands had also reported $2.6bn of revenue and profits of $53mn.
“Why then, if you’re that liquid, and you’re creating all this cash flow, do you need this loan?” Clarke said, adding that the company seemed like a “paper tiger”.
Based on his advice, Clarke’s client turned down the loan.
Other lenders were also puzzled by First Brands’ willingness to raise debt at such a high cost despite reporting healthy cash balances, as well as the fact the group’s reported margins were far higher than those of peers.
A senior manager at one large US investment firm told the FT that when their team met James last year to quiz him on these issues, they had been surprised to find that First Brands’ headquarters occupied a single floor of a Cleveland office building, which was “strange for a $5bn revenue company”.
The credit fund manager said James seemed “very knowledgeable” on stripping costs from the underlying business but gave a “really woolly answer” on why his company was willing to pay such high interest on its debt, while responses about its high cash balance also did not stack up.
His firm had been one of First Brands’ largest lenders but cut its entire position in the company’s debt in the months after the meeting. The manager added that they feared there was “no equity value” left in a business that had “become dependent on constantly making new acquisitions”.
Falcon Group, a London-based inventory management company, met First Brands in 2022 and spoke to the company a few times about extending it roughly $200mn.
Founder Kamel Alzarka said the first warning sign was First Brands offering to pay fees in the mid-teen percentages for the inventory finance, when Falcon would typically expect 5-8 per cent for such lending.
The structure of the deal was another red flag. In a typical inventory finance deal, the client would get access to parts in bulk for a discount, but would not want it all at once on its balance sheet. An inventory finance firm would come in, buy the parts, keep them on its balance sheet and dole them out “just in time” as the client needed them.
But in this case, Alzarka said, First Brands suggested selling its existing inventory to the firm and buying it back — a “repo” transaction — and wanted to act quickly.
The deal was too risky for Falcon, which found the urgency and offer of high fees confusing. “It didn’t add up,” Alzarka said, “and we didn’t see why they would be coming to us.”
“We’re very happy we didn’t do that deal,” he added. “You might do nine deals that work, but then you have one deal like First Brands, and you lose everything you’ve done.”
Soros Fund Management, the $25bn family office of billionaire investor George Soros, traded in and out of First Brands customer invoices between 2019 and 2023, according to people familiar with the matter. It ultimately sold out in 2023 because of concerns over the company’s management, one of the people said, netting a profit on its investment.
For Apollo, Vari-Form’s collapse proved instructive in building up a picture of allegations of financial mismanagement against James. Lawsuits alleged that the company had failed to honour employee severance agreements or to pass on tax refunds that were payable to its former owner. The employee severance lawsuit was ultimately dismissed, while James’s holding company did not file a response to the tax refund suit.
Apollo’s thesis was also informed by other publicly available lawsuits against James relating to previous corporate collapses, according to people familiar with the trade. Several lenders had accused him of fraudulent conduct, including allegations that his companies had made “misrepresentations” relating to customer invoices and inventory pledged as collateral.
James denied allegations of fraud and the cases were settled before reaching trial. His spokesperson has previously told the FT that claims of “improper dealings by Mr James were categorically false”. A US bankruptcy judge on Wednesday overturned a freeze on James’s personal assets that First Brands had argued was necessary to prevent “potential dissipation of funds”.
Apollo’s structured products division Atlas, which it acquired from Credit Suisse in 2023 before the bank’s rescue, had also provided financing to First Brands prior to the US private capital firm’s takeover, according to people familiar with the matter.
Away from investment firms, some bank chiefs have also publicly stated that they eschewed lending to First Brands.
Tim Spence, chief executive of Fifth Third Bank, a regional lender based in First Brands’ home state of Ohio that previously lent to the company, told investors last month it had cut off First Brands a few years ago because of “some issues that were identified during the collateral reviews we were doing”.
He added that Fifth Third retained a residual exposure of just $51,000 of operating leases secured with a forklift and a printer, quipping that after discovering the printer did not have wheels he decided that, “if necessary, we’re going to use the forklift to get the printer out of there”.
It began in the small Catalan town of Taradell as a plan to provide local people with allotments where they could grow their own food.
Four activists came together with the aim of promoting good environmental practices in local agriculture and business, as well as supplying renewable energy. The project, however, was about much more than growing vegetables.
The town has a strong tradition of community action, and as the initiative gathered momentum, the activists formed a cooperative, Taradell Sostenible, which now has 111 members and supplies power to more than 100 households. These include some of the area’s most vulnerable citizens, says Eugeni Vila, the coop’s president. “The question was how could people with few resources join the coop when membership costs €100,” says Vila. “We agreed that people designated as poor by the local authority could join for only €25 and thus benefit from the cheap electricity we generate.”
Taradell Sostenible have installed solar panels on the roofs of a sports centre and a cultural centre to supply electricity to the community, with funding from the government’s Institute for the Diversification and Saving of Energy (IDAE), which is working to expand energy communities across the country.
“We’re very proud of the fact that IDAE describes us as pioneers,” says Vila. “The EU’s Next Generation funding, which we got through IDAE, helped us to complete these two projects.”
Once they were up and running, they realised they needed more professional management, so in 2022 they combined forces with other local energy communities.
Renewable energy is flourishing in Spain, a country with no gas or oil and little coal of its own, but an abundance of sunshine. For years, solar installation was held back by the notorious “sunshine tax” introduced in 2015. Rather than reward individuals for installing solar power, the government taxed them after the big power companies successfully argued that energy self-sufficiency amounted to unfair competition.
That tax was abolished in 2018, and energy self-sufficiency, mainly through photovoltaic panels, has increased 17-fold, according to the IDAE. The institute is now turning its attention from subsidising solar installations on individual homes to prioritising energy communities such as Taradell, with initial funding of €148.5m (£130m) earmarked for 200 projects.
The IDAE policy aims to bring cheap electricity to households suffering from pobreza energética (fuel poverty) who cannot afford the upfront cost of installing panels. Photograph: Bloomberg/Getty Images
Environmentalists have long advocated the spread of energy communities, in which solar panels on the rooftops of government buildings, warehouses and sports facilities supply electricity to nearby homes and business. Until recently, this was limited to a 500 metres radius, but that limit has now been extended to 2,000 metres – and it is taking off across the country, thanks to government support channeled through the IDAE.
The institute’s policy aims to bring cheap electricity to households suffering from pobreza energética (fuel poverty) who cannot afford the upfront cost of installing solar panels – typically €5,000-6,000 for each household.
The institute defines fuel poverty as low-income, energy-inefficient households where a high proportion of income is spent on energy supply.
As well as fostering the development of energy communities, the IDAE encourages the communities to talk to each other, to form a patchwork of autonomous but integrated groups. Taradell has now teamed up with two nearby energy communities in Balenyà and La Tonenca.
“We’ve developed a formula to help people who are struggling to get by through incorporating them into a network that helps them to improve their situation,” he says. “We’ve taken advantage of the EU Sun4All scheme to develop a system to assess who are the vulnerable families, and not just in terms of fuel poverty.” The Sun4All project, which finished last year, was an EU project supporting solar power projects that helped low income families.
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On the other side of the country, 1,150km (715 miles) away, the island of Ons off Spain’s Atlantic coast is also in line to benefit from the new IDAE policy. Ons, population 92, will soon be able to do away with the generator that has been its only source of electricity and replace it with solar power.
“With these subsidies, we’re going to install solar panels on the local authority buildings to supply energy to the islanders, most of whom are elderly and vulnerable,” said José Antonio Fernández Bouzas, the head of the Atlantic Islands national park.
The Galician regional government has already installed solar panels on the nearby Cíes Islands, helping local businesses to dispense with diesel-run generators.
“These are protected areas and we want them to be self-sufficient in energy,” Bouzas said.
In addition to supplying cheap and clean electricity, localised energy communities reduce the transportation costs and pollution associated with large solar and wind farms. They also make a lot of sense in a country where 65% of the population live in apartment blocks rather than individual houses.
This localised, community approach may also make the country’s grid system less vulnerable to events such as the massive blackout on April 28 this year which left all of Spain and Portugal without electricity for most of the day.
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The world’s largest asset manager BlackRock is revamping its flagship quant hedge fund as it seeks to take on industry giants such as DE Shaw, Citadel and Millennium.
The investment group is adding stockpickers to Systematic Total Alpha (STA), its top mathematical and data-driven hedge fund, following a strategy pursued by multi-manager hedge funds that house human and computer-driven strategies under one roof.
The quant fund is also expanding fundraising efforts to challenge larger rivals after securing the three-year trading record required by many allocators to invest.
STA had $7bn in capital to invest as of the end of October — up from $5bn in August, but still a relative minnow compared with the multi-strategy firms Citadel and Millennium.
Between its launch in June 2022 and October, it returned 14 per cent on an annualised basis, net of fees: a strong performance for a three-year period, but one that STA will need to show it can maintain over a longer horizon.
STA is only part of BlackRock’s wider hedge fund business, which has about $90bn in client assets, making it one of the biggest hedge fund platforms in the world. BlackRock has increasingly been investing in its alternative asset management business, having purchased private credit manager HPS for $12bn last year.
The decision to add stocks picked by humans to the quant fund reflects how the hedge fund industry has increasingly evolved away from individual star managers running their own funds.
BlackRock does not plan to recruit from outside the group but to make use of existing employees elsewhere in its hedge fund business to help increase the stability of STA’s returns. Portfolio managers would generate returns in specific sectors in off years for the main quant strategies.
BlackRock’s best-known stockpicker is Alister Hibbert, who together with Michael Constantis manages a $10.5bn hedge fund.
The evolution of BlackRock’s quant hedge fund to include stockpicking mirrors the evolution of US rival DE Shaw, which was founded by David Shaw in 1988. While DE Shaw started out in quantitative investing, it later added stockpickers and macro traders. More than half of its hedge fund assets are now managed by humans rather than machines.
While BlackRock hopes to take on industry giants such as DE Shaw, Citadel and Millennium, STA uses a variation on a traditional “2 and 20” fee structure, which has proved a stumbling block for other hedge funds that have sought to take on the multi-managers.
Instead of imposing a 1.5 or 2 per cent fee on assets each year and 20 per cent on any positive returns, many multi-managers pass forgo an annual fee and pass on all costs including bonuses, data and technology direct to investors.
This has helped supercharge pay in the industry and sparked a talent war, making it difficult for hedge funds using the traditional fee model to compete. While DE Shaw does not charge pass through fees, it charges a management fee of up to 3.5 per cent and up to 40 per cent of profits, investor documents show.
These top firms also manage far more money than STA, giving them the financial firepower to pay star traders packages that would be difficult to emulate with a smaller asset bases. Millennium manages $81bn while DE Shaw and Citadel manage $70bn and $69bn respectively.
Oil and gas giant Inpex has proposed Australia’s largest carbon capture facility in waters off the Northern Territory, which climate advocates have warned could turn Darwin into a carbon dumping ground.
The Bonaparte carbon capture and storage (CCS) project proposes to pipe and store 8m to 10m tonnes of carbon dioxide (CO2) into an underground aquifer located about 250km offshore west of Darwin, according to documents lodged with the federal environment department.
Analysts said those volumes – if achieved – would make it one of the largest CCS projects in the world, while noting that most failed to meet their targets.
The Bonaparte project, a joint venture between Inpex, TotalEnergies and Woodside Energy, involved sourcing CO2 from “a range of industrial facilities in the region”, including nearby liquefied natural gas plants, and eventually imports from the Asia Pacific. Carbon emissions would be transported offshore via a pipeline through Darwin harbour.
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Environmentalists have raised concerns that the project would be used to justify the further expansion of fossil fuels in the territory.
Globally, 77 CCS projects were now in operation, capturing about 64m tonnes a year, according to an industry status report.
Josh Runciman, the lead Australian gas analyst at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, said most CO2 captured by the industry was used for enhanced oil recovery, a way to extract more oil and gas from reservoirs.
In practice, he said most CCS projects designed purely to capture and store carbon dioxide had “massively underperformed”, and many ceased operation sooner than intended.
Australia now had two commercial scale CCS projects: Santos’s Moomba project in South Australia and Chevron’s Gorgon facility in Western Australia. The Inpex proposal would be much larger.
“A 10m tonne per annum target would make this the largest CCS project globally,” Runciman said – but even assuming it reached those targets, that would be a “very small fraction” of the CO2 emissions globally from oil and gas.
The Gorgon facility, which started injecting carbon dioxide in 2019, had captured less than half of the volumes it had originally intended, at a cost of more than $200 a tonne, he said.
The Guardian contacted Inpex for comment but did not receive a response. In July, the company’s managing director, Tetsu Murayama, said in a statement: “The Bonaparte CCS project could substantially contribute to decarbonising northern Australia and potentially the wider Indo-Pacific region.”
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The Bonaparte project was one component of larger plans to convert Darwin’s Middle Arm Peninsula into a hub for carbon import and storage, with Dutch company Vopak separately developing a dedicated import terminal for liquefied CO2.
Environment Centre NT said the proposals risked turning the Top End into the “world’s largest carbon dumping ground”.
The group’s senior climate campaigner, Bree Ahrens, said: “This is a dirty deal to import the world’s pollution, and the Albanese Government needs to rule it out.”
The environmental organisation expressed concerns that CCS was being used to greenwash a massive expansion of gas production in the Northern Territory.
“Carbon capture and storage is just a fossil fuel industry’s excuse to keep extracting coal and gas while pretending to care about climate change.
