National Grid (NG.) is routinely restricting the use of its own power cables from the Continent because of the risk of blackouts if they failed. Britain’s electricity system is sufficiently fragile at certain times of day that if one of the subsea “interconnectors” tripped while importing at full capacity, it could trigger power cuts like those of August 9. A senior National Grid source told The Times that for several years it had been managing this risk by limiting the use of the cables at these times, especially overnight, so as to reduce the size of the potential supply shock. They said that the costs of doing so, which are understood to run to many millions of pounds, were cheaper than paying for enough back-up to withstand a potential failure. The disclosure of the arrangement, described by one analyst as “perverse”, raises questions over how National Grid manages supplies and over its plans to spend billions of pounds building more interconnectors.
Highly sensitive personal data, including banking details of more than 1,600 Natwest customers, has been left in a former employee’s home for more than a decade because the bank has been unable to reach an agreement on the safe return of the information. Royal Bank of Scotland Group (RBS) has not alerted affected customers to the serious data breach because it does not know exactly what information its former worker holds. Anonymous examples seen by The Times suggest that the information includes account and sort codes, credit card details and people’s account histories, including direct debits, as well as their names, addresses, relationship status, occupation and phone numbers.
Sainsbury (J) (SBRY) has played down talk that it has launched a formal hunt for a new chief executive to replace Mike Coupe as three insiders jumped to the top of the list of possible candidates. The future of Mr Coupe has come under a cloud since an audacious proposed merger with Asda was blocked by the Competition and Markets Authority in April. Despite winning plaudits for his acquisition of the Argos catalogue chain in 2016, and being overwhelmingly re-elected by shareholders last month, there has been persistent speculation that the surprise failure of the Asda deal would cost Mr Coupe his job. In a report that was flatly denied by the retailer, The Sunday Telegraph said that John Rogers, who runs Argos, Simon Roberts, director of retail and operations, and Paul Mills-Hicks, commercial director of food, were being lined up as potential frontrunners.
