Moneysupermarket reaps the rewards after rush to lock into new energy deals ahead of the April price hikes
The company, owned by Mony Group, said that this fuelled a 'modest' rise in revenue from January to the end of April.
The group was updating investors ahead of its annual meeting on Thursday.
The energy price cap was hiked again in April, with bills reaching an average of £1,849 a year.
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Americans swoop on yet another UK fintech champion: Corpay to buy FTSE 250 Alpha Group in £1.8bn deal
Another British fintech champion is to be bought by American predators – in a deal worth £1.8billion. The board of Alpha Group – led by former Virgin Money boss Jayne-Anne Gadhia – has accepted a bid from US payments giant Corpay. Shares in the FTSE 250 payments company soared more than 25 per cent after bosses recommended that investors back a sweetened 4250p-per-share offer. The deal comes amid a mounting crisis as a takeover frenzy accelerates. Research from broker Peel Hunt shows the UK is on course for the biggest year of takeovers since 2021, after £74billion of offers in the first half of 2025. Scientific testing firm Spectris has agreed to be bought by American private equity firm KKR for £4.7billion in the biggest deal of the year after a bidding war with Advent International. US semiconductor group Qualcomm is to buy British chipmaker Alphawave for £1.8billion and Deliveroo was swooped on by DoorDash with a £2.9billion offer. Another takeover battle saw Primary Health Properties beat KKR to buy GP surgery owner Assura for £1.8billion. And companies are switching listings to New York, with fintech darling Wise the latest planning to defect. Meanwhile, a lack of fresh listings through initial public offerings means they are not being replaced. Alpha turned down Corpay's initial £1.2billion offer in May but, after talks, the latest bid is a 55 per cent premium to Alpha's undisturbed share price of 2745p on May 1, before news of the takeover interest became public. Dan Coatsworth, an investment analyst at AJ Bell, said: 'The market completely misjudged how much Corpay would offer, judging by the share price jump on the formal bid. 'While the shares enjoyed a little bump on the initial approach, the market didn't price in a successful bid. The fact Alpha rejected a proposal made it clear to Corpay that it would have to dig a lot deeper or walk away. 'It got the message loud and clear and Corpay looks to have gone in with its best offer. 'The 55 per cent bid premium is much more generous than the 40 per cent average seen across UK-listed takeovers so far in 2025.' Corpay, an S&P 500 company with a market capitalisation of around £17billion, has its headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia. Following the sale, Alpha will continue to be based in London. But there could be 'possible role overlaps' in some administrative and head office functions, the companies have warned. If job cuts are made solely within Alpha's business, it could affect up to 13 per cent of staff. The takeover, which must be approved by 75 per cent of shareholders, is expected to complete in the final quarter of the year. Alpha chairman Gadhia said: 'I am delighted Corpay has made an offer which the board considers to be in the best interests of shareholders, clients and staff.' Corpay boss Ronald Clarke said: 'We couldn't be happier to acquire Alpha.'
Daily Mail
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Deloitte probed over Glencore audits after commodities giant is hit by bribery and corruption lawsuits
Deloitte is being investigated by the UK accounting watchdog over its audits of Glencore's finances. The Financial Reporting Council (FRC) will probe the Big Four firm's work for the Swiss commodities giant over an eight-year period. It will look into whether Deloitte gave 'sufficient consideration to the risk of non-compliance with laws and regulations' when signing off accounts between 2013 and 2020. Glencore has been rocked by bribery and corruption lawsuits in the last few years. The FRC noted that the FTSE 100 commodities trader and miner and a UK subsidiary had been 'subject to investigations by government agencies into misconduct'. In total Glencore, which produces coal, copper, nickel, zinc and cobalt, has had to pay out over £1billion after legal action in Brazil, the UK, and US. Probe: Big Four accountancy firm Deloitte is being investigated by the Financial Reporting Council over its audits of Glencore's finances In 2022, it was fined £281million following an investigation by the UK's Serious Fraud Office. The SFO found Glencore paid nearly £21million in bribes to gain preferential access to oil in Africa. It flew cash to Africa and falsified documents. In 2022 Glencore admitted bribery and failure to prevent bribery after transactions in Cameroon, Equatorial Guinea, Ivory Coast, Nigeria and South Sudan. Six former executives have been charged with bribery. A trial is yet to begin. Regulators are probing Deloitte's work on four audits, including for bus operator Go-Ahead, fashion brand Joules, car seller Lookers and fintech Stenn. Deloitte UK said: 'We are committed to the highest standards of audit quality and will fully co-operate.' The FRC can impose fines and non-financial penalties if it finds wrongdoing. In 2019 Deloitte was fined £4.2million for its audit of outsourcing firm Serco, which had paid more than £20million to settle fraud and false accounting charges. This year PwC was hit with a £4.5million fine for 'serious failings' in its 2019 audit of Wyelands Bank. Big Four peer KPMG paid out £4.5million after 'serious failures' in its audit of Rolls-Royce's 2010 accounts. In January, the FRC probed KPMG's audit of Ladbrokes-owner Entain's 2022 accounts. The gambling giant paid a £615million settlement to resolve a probe into alleged bribery at its former Turkish online betting business.
Daily Mail
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Flawed white collar justice: Fraud Office must act faster to bring prosecutions, says ALEX BRUMMER
Top-level fraud convictions in Britain are rare. The decision by the Supreme Court to overturn the verdict on former Citigroup and UBS trader Tom Hayes will not make the task any easier. Hayes was involved in the manipulation of trades in the London Inter-Bank Offered Rate used in billions of transactions across the globe. In the search for justice, when the scandal erupted in 2012, Hayes became the poster person for City wrongdoing. He received a 14-year sentence after a jury trial (he served five-and-a-half years). The Supreme Court reversal of the verdict, wildly celebrated by Hayes, was less about market abuse and more about over-zealous directions of the judge to the jury at the trial. It has become fashionable to suggest that because many traders indulged in similar efforts to fix market outcomes, that what Hayes did was ordinary rather than exceptional. Cheating should never be acceptable. Market participants on the other side of the transaction will have lost out because of a lack of honesty and transparency. The context of Hayes' conviction and sentencing must be understood. The Serious Fraud Office (SFO) needed victories, having failed to bring anyone to justice during the Great Financial Crisis in 2008. Taxpayer anger was running high and Hayes, by his own confession, was an easy target. Nothing could be pinned on more senior executives. But in one of his best moments, the then Governor of the Bank of England, Mervyn King, summoned Barclays grandees to Threadneedle Street and demanded the head of chief executive Bob Diamond. For as long as I can remember reviews into the judiciary have made the case against jury trials for fraud. It is argued that City malfeasance is too complex for ordinary mortals and some kind of tribunal system should be established. This was first recommended by the Roskill Report in the 1980s, repeated by Lord Justice Auld in 2001 and endorsed again by Lord Leveson this month. All wanted to substitute financial experts sitting with a judge. The target should not be the jury system. The real villains are overpaid City law firms and barristers who shut witnesses down by claiming 'privilege', long delays for white-collar cases and efforts to drown jurors in thousands of pages of incomprehensible testimony. The SFO takes far too long to investigate and bring prosecutions, overcomplicates, and then claims the law is not fit for purpose. Contrast Britain's sclerotic justice with that in the US where bitcoin rascal Sam Bankman-Fried of FTX was indicted, tried and sentenced in just over a year. It was ever thus. Instead of cheering Hayes' triumph, we should bemoan the fact that the route to financial justice is so deeply flawed. Wrong boot Rachel Reeves' purpose in seeking to remove the 'boot on the neck' of business by slashing red tape is to gee-up investment in British innovation. One fears that taxes already imposed on wealth, abolition of non-domicile status, higher capital gains and inheritance tax levies already are driving the companies we want in Britain to cash out and scram. Latest is fintech-forex group Alpha, which is accepting a £1.8billion bid from US competitor Corpay. The 55 per cent premium based on the share price in May appears generous. It is less convincing when one considers the infamous 'London discount' to New York. Some recent tech bids achieved a whopping 96 per cent upside. One might have hoped that chairman Jayne-Anne Gadhia, of Virgin Money fame, and Clive Kahn, chief executive of Travelex in its glory days, might have shown more resistance. Pressure, however, to take the money and run is overwhelming. Sinking sun In the 1980s and 1990s the rising economic power of Japan and its investment in the US were seen as an enormous threat to US hegemony, as portrayed in Michael Crichton's novel 'Rising Sun' and subsequent movie. In Trump's America it is very different. The price for lowering car tariffs is that Japan spends £405billion on inward investment in the US. How the world turns!
