The 10 things to follow in business on Wednesday September 23

Volkswagen CEO insists he is not leaving ; China factory activity weakens further; Instagram now has 400 million monthly active users

Volkswagen faces the cost of recalling millions of vehicles (Reuters)

1. Volkswagen CEO Martin Winterkorn insists he is not leaving the company, despite German media reports to the contrary, following allegations that software was used to cheat emissions tests.

2. United Utilities to pay £25 million in compensation to 300,000 customers forced to boil water over summer after cryptosporidium outbreak

3. The US company that raised the price of a drug by 5,000 per cent said it will lower the cost, after the price hike from $13.50 a pill to $750 sparked outrage when it was reported by the New York Times.

4. Chinese President Xi Jinping landed in Seattle as part of a seven-day US tour. He has sought to reassure US business leaders, in a wide-ranging speech covering China's economic reforms and cyber-crime.

5. A Chinese probe found evidence that Citic Securities, the nation’s biggest brokerage, engaged in insider trading connected to the government’s rescue of the stock market

6. Stock markets have fallen on worse-than-expected Chinese factory data showing activity at its weakest for six-and-a-half years. It was the seventh month in a row that the private Caixin/Markit China Manufacturing Purchasing Managers' Index (PMI) had fallen.

7. Asian shares are down:
- Japan's Nikkei is down 1.96 per cent
- Hong Kong's Hang Seng is down 3.14 per cent and
- Shanghai Composite is 2.10 per cent lower.

8. Swiss Re, a reinsurance company based in Zurich, is spending £1.6 billion on private equity owned Guardian Financial Services

9. Instagram now has 400 million monthly active users. More than half of its most recent 100 million users live in Europe and Asia, and that more than 75 per cent of total users live outside the US.

10. Web-performance and security startup Cloud just raised $110 million (£71.7 million) from Fidelity, Google, and Microsoft. The company started out as a class project at Harvard.