Latest news with #EUB
Mint
21-05-2025
- Business
- Mint
Bloomberg Terminal Outage: Financial markets data service platform disrupts UK, EU bonds auction
Bloomberg, the financial data service used by traders around the world, was hit by an outage on Wednesday, briefly disrupting auctions of UK and EU bonds. The Bloomberg terminal is the crown jewel of the media empire founded by US billionaire Michael Bloomberg in 1981 and counts some 350,000 users worldwide. The service, which costs subscribers tens of thousands of dollars a year, is ubiquitous in trading rooms, providing live pricing of company stocks, currencies, commodities, bonds and other financial instruments. Traders and investors also use it for its news content and analytics and to exchange messages with peers around the world. But several of its functions stopped working or came to a crawl on Wednesday. "Our systems are returning to normal operations and Terminal functionality has been restored following a service disruption earlier today," Bloomberg spokesman Ty Trippet said in a statement. The company's help desk had told AFP at around 0900 GMT that a "technical issue" was affecting multiple clients and technicians were working to resolve the problem. The service started working again but slower at around 1000 GMT. "Due to global technical problems with Bloomberg, the EU postpones the deadline for today's EUB auction by 1 hour... to ensure a smooth functioning of the auction," the European Commission said in a statement. The UK Debt Management Office also said it had to extend the bidding window for a government debt auction due to the "market-wide Bloomberg system issues". The bidding window closed later, at 1030 GMT. "It's a mess. It's blocking business," Gregoire Kounowski, an investment adviser at London-based wealth manager Norman K., told AFP. Giles Plump, a London-based copper trader at US financial services firm StoneX, told AFP that price feeds were "very intermittent" and some functions were not loading, but those were "not major problems" for him. A trader in Dubai, who declined to give his name, said the terminal was "down" and "sometimes flickers back to life for five seconds".
CBC
01-04-2025
- Business
- CBC
No fooling: N.B. Power rate hike April 1 to cost average residential customer $244
N.B. Power's latest rate increase took effect early Tuesday and for an average residential customer it will add about $244 in higher charges in the coming year according to a recent decision of the New Brunswick Energy and Utilities Board. The board held hearings into the rate increase last year, but had been waiting to finalize amounts so it could calculate and add in a surcharge that customers are to be billed to help retire past over-expenditures by the utility. Those surcharges were approved two weeks ago and incorporated into a new rate table and schedule all, of which was set to take effect April 1. "The Board has reviewed the revised and refiled table and has determined that it complies with the Board's direction," acting EUB chair Christopher Stewart wrote on March 21 in a final order that cleared the way for all elements of the new rate package to be implemented. According to data filed by N.B. Power with the EUB, its average residential customer consumes about 16,000 kilowatt hours of electricity a year. At that level, under the new rates, an urban household will pay $2,781.80 for electricity in the coming year, not including taxes. That is $244 more than last year. It is also $645.20 more than three years ago following increases in April 2024 and April 2023. The changes still leave N.B. Power with some of the lowest rates for electricity in the region outside Quebec. But with the utility's prices rising 30 per cent in three years, consumers have not been in a mood to look at silver linings. WATCH | Up, up and away: Why electricity rate increases have reignited debates over the role and future N.B. Power: How electricity rates have become a symbol of New Brunswick's affordability problems 2 hours ago Duration 2:22 N.B. Power rates for residential customers are lower than those in most neighbouring jurisdictions, but they have also risen 30 per cent in three years. The escalations are stinging weary consumers, which has the Holt government promising action of some kind, soon. Last week, New Brunswick Premier Susan Holt expressed frustration with the parade of rate hikes and announced a government review of N.B. Power will soon be undertaken with all potential solutions, including a sale of the utility, up for discussion. She promised widespread public consultations will be a central part of that effort. "I am not going to assume that I know what every single New Brunswicker thinks about N.B. Power," said Holt. I certainly know what I hear them telling me right now — it needs to change. The rates can't keep going like they're going now and the status quo cannot continue." The price of electricity has emerged as a major political issue even though the latest increase was not a surprise. It was originally proposed by N.B. Power in December 2023 and has been subject to scrutiny and debate for the last 15 months. During October's general election, N.B. Power's future was not a major issue campaigned on by any party, but a series of events in February suddenly elevated concerns about its troubles. In mid-February, the province lowered its estimate of expected net earnings at N.B. Power for its most recent financial year by $59.3 million after another disappointing year of production at the Point Lepreau nuclear generating station. Days later, J.D. Irving Ltd announced it was cutting production in half at its Saint John paper mill and blamed rising electricity costs. Days after, utility executives disappointed MLAs by failing to complete a report on why bills to residential customers this winter have been so much higher than many expected. Last week, following those controversies, Holt said her government had investigated whether it might be able to cancel, delay or reduce the coming increase but decided it was not legally feasible. "We were looking at mechanisms to unravel the EUB decision, but there is not a lot at our disposal to affect April 1 right now," Holt said. An urban consumer of N.B. Power who uses 16,000 kilowatt hours of electricity this year will pay $354.60 in monthly service charges, $2,361.60 for the volume of electricity consumed, and a "rate rider" of $65.60 to help pay for financial troubles the utility encountered in previous years, most notably for problems encountered at Point Lepreau. All three of those amounts are higher than last year.
