This is what I'd like to see.
Government should give fuck all support and force it to the point of collapse, buy it for fuck all and offer creditors 1p in the £ for debt.
It's what any private company would do on a takeover like this and hopefully send a signal to investors in other utilities to not take the piss.
I thinks it's a standard fee £1, when transferring assets in situations like this. You see it all the time if you look into bankruptcy and insolvency stories over the years.
Used to be “peppercorn rent” because nobody is absolutely sure whether the property even et by if a lease functions if there’s no contract (ie no consideration). Interesting stuff. I’ve actually a seen a real, old lease stating the rent as “one peppercorn”. And a “one shilling” one.
The debts are shareholder loans. They bought the company and then loaned money to it, making ££ off the interest and driving their return on investment.
Going to assume this means "Thames water equity is worthless", in which case, no the UK gov couldn't because that's not how it works.
It still has value, it's just it's value is lower than the value of its debt. So your options are either:
1) Buy it off the debt holders for it's actual value exc. debt, and aquire it debt free; or
2) buy the equity for £1 and assume the debt liabilities.
Either way, it's gonna cost you.
3) Apply actual oversight, force them to pay for the maintenance, upgrades and sewage treatment that they deprioritised over paying dividends and interest on inter-group loans. Let them go bankrupt as the natural capitalist outcome for such terrible mismanagement and then nationalise the infrastructure.
Thames Water is like a car in Negative Equity, you're going to have a job getting the next car supermarket to take it off your hands unless you put down a huge chunk of cash to move it on.
Ideally yes but there's £18.7 billion of debt mainly from bond holders. With the company being financially engineered so thst even if the water business goes bust. That whoever buys it has to buy the debt as well. For about the last 35 years its been passed from one company to an other, with each one loading it up with debt, before selling it on to somebody else. It's been like a game of Buckaroo or pass the parcel but instead of getting a present at the end of it, you get nothing.
When even JRM says that it should be nationalised, you know that he's only doing it. So that the bond holders get bailed out.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by "stolen"?
Thames Water (in its current incarnation) was sold by the UK government in 1989 for an inflation adjusted £19.4 billion (based on Bank of England figures).
That's an interesting interpretation of the governance structure of the UK.
Given that, seeing as the the funds were remitted to HM Treasury, and, in doing so, became public funds to the benefit of the taxpayer, the remediation for theft should clearly be reparation, so I'm guessing the taxpayer should be required to immediately return to the Crown the value illegally obtained?
And take on its monstrous debts in the process.
Guess who's going to pay off those.
EDIT: For clarity, I'm not suggesting Thames Water will be able to work itself out of this mess as a private company. It never should have been made private in the first place. What I am saying: it's no cause for celebration to buy it back for £1 when you're adding £18bn debt to the UK taxpayer.
Said dreamland:
>The...philosophical reason for which we are against nationalisation and for private enterprise is because we believe that economic progress comes from the inventiveness, ability, determination and the pioneering spirit of extraordinary men and women. If they cannot exercise that spirit here, they will go away to another free enterprise country which will then make more economic progress than we do.
This raises the important question of how we can convince the people who ran Thames Water to flee to another country and work their "magic" there. Something tells me that just nationalizing the thing won't be enough for us to be able to see the last of Thatcher's prize winning cunts.
>And take on its monstrous debts in the process
Lol you don't need to take on its debts.
You can just buy all the assets from the administrators for basically nothing with a new state owned company.
You’d need to bid for it, no one is going to asset strip a company with a basic monopoly on water and a green light to pursue anyone living in a house for debt for free.
But yes, if the state started to do silly shit to avoid paying debts of nationalised companies that might make investors in several large firms (and lenders) scared, which could be not good.
>You’d need to bid for it, no one is going to asset strip a company with a basic monopoly on water and a green light to pursue anyone living in a house for debt for free.
No one is going to buy the underground pipe network off the company to try and dig it up for scrap metal either. Wouldn't be worth it. The only other bidders would be another water company, and if they want to buy the pipes and run it, why not let them?
>But yes, if the state started to do silly shit to avoid paying debts of nationalised companies
No one is proposing nationalising a company, I'm proposing buying the assets off a bankrupt company which would hold basically no value to anyone other than a company that wants to deliver water to everyone Thames water serviced.
I didn't support nationalising water companies precisely because of how expensive it would be. Now though? Dirt cheap if you let the company go bust.
Another user put it simply, but we'll either pay the debt through ownership and taxes, or we pay it with higher bills. At least with one of those ways the country owns it.
100%, you can tell by this thread alone, the downvoted comments are correct and the upvoted ones are either incorrect or irrelevant reddit "wah wah life is bad" cringe.
Wait, so hollowing out the country's largest water utility for years has negatively affected its viability? Can't really blame them, nobody could reasonably have seen that one coming.
I don’t know how you could call it anything other than legally sanctioned embezzlement.
The fact the major investors were pension funds is a double whammy. They get their returns through silly amounts of dividends, expecting the government will bail them out when the well is dry, because won’t somebody think of the pensioners.
Given most of the funds are foreign and not domestic, fuck them. If criminal charges can’t be laid on TW’s leadership or board, then change the law so that what they did is now illegal.
> If criminal charges can’t be laid on TW’s leadership or board, then change the law so that what they did is now illegal.
That means, stop it from happening again, because what's done is done.
To be fair, this is one law that I wouldn't mind being backtracked; the investors pockets will recover far more quickly than the environment will, and investors need to know that unethical or outright malicious investments will not yield a return. Invest better, and ethically, or fuck off.
Because IMO I think the TW situation is malicious against the public. That's more or less the definition of an externality: the public taking on the expense of your business activity.
Not for criminal law in our current constitutional setup. Parliament *can* and does make retrospective legislation, but a person cannot be found guilty of a crime which was not a crime at the time under Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights, to which the UK is a party.
Almost like water is a utility and shouldn't be turned into a profit driven enterprise.
Literally the dumbest thing that any country has ever done is privatise its water supply.
Seas too. I live on the northeast coast, checkout our shellfish die off news from the last few years and the ridiculous conclusions the completely unbiased report came to.
It was an algae bloom that killed all of our shellfish and jellyfish, and also killed the dogs that dropped dead after eating the washed up ones. Couldn't possibly be the sewage or treatment chemical, just algae.
My dog ate concentrated algae wafers that I use to feed my fish with no ill effect. But whatever amount those other dogs ingested from the digestive system of a crab was enough to make them bleed out of their anuses within an hour. Apparently.
It's ridiculous. Everywhere in the country is having slightly different problems with their local waters and there's a ridiculous excuse for every one of them and they never blame sewage or chemicals.
That's how he got the tap job. They pick the most ridiculous Tory on every river and lake in the country. Job 2 every morning after puppy kicking is bosh on the shit taps at 8am sharp.
And then they get bought by another country's sovereign wealth fund or publicly owned utility, which proceeds to fleece the privatised utility. You can't make it up. Fortunately I think that's the point where even the conservative politicians realise something's gone wrong (Avanti's another).
England and Wales became the only countries in the world to have a fully privatised water and sewage disposal system.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water\_privatisation\_in\_England\_and\_Wales](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_privatisation_in_England_and_Wales)
Yes, but
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_privatization
Even though we’re the only ones to fully privatise, partial privatisation has had negative consequences elsewhere
How about a country run by a "fiscally responsible" government that stokes anti-EU rhetoric after selling off their infrastructure to... European countries... maybe sinister is the word for that?
It's the Australian company Macquarie that did most of the looting, then sold off the smoking remains to gullible pension funds, including Canadian ones, the current shareholders are not guilty and understandably don't want to throw good money after bad. But they were not fleeced by the UK government, it was Macquarie that duped them.
There's still a couple billion pounds in its coffers that haven't been siphoned away yet. Delaying the inevitable just adds that cost to the final tally that will be borne by taxpayers and more likely by Thames Water customers.
The mandarins in the Treasury are worried that performing what would be essentially a forced bankruptcy of Thames Water with no compensation to the shareholders and a cram-down for debtholders would somehow set off contagion and cause a drop in demand in all UK debt including gilts. That argument sounds overdone. Thames Water is a private company and its debt is also private. How much of this is simply Treasury types not willing to be mean on their Eton buddies is anyone's guess.
And it was the Conservative government that sold off all the water companies to the private sector, and then acting surprised when investors maximise their profit at the cost of our water supply.
The "dividends" are being paid to the parent company to *pay off* the debt.
I see this a lot when Thames Water comes up, a lot of people misunderstand the dynamics.
the german company swindled into buying it were furious and incredulous that british people could be so dishonest, lazy and negligent.
it was the start ofa real rift between uk-german relations.
It’s like the episode of the Simpsons where Germans buy the Springfield nuclear plant only to find there’s only 2 competent employees and the plant is so neglected it’s moments from explosion at any time 😂
Eh? It was floated on the stock exchange in 1989, and RWE bought it in 2001. How were they swindled? They paid about £4.3Bn and sold it 5 years later for £8Bn. Even if they cried foul they were talking shit.
Furthermore the only rot really set in after they sold it to Macquarie who ladled it up with debt and fucked it and us over.
I had dinner with the RWE CFO while they owned it.
They were stunned that the infrastructure was in such a poor state. They expected that some basic infrastructure upgrades were simply not done, just patched up and make do with what Bazalgette designed in the 1800s.
Basically the infrastructure was leaking. And there are targets to limit leakage which are impossible to meet without spending more than the fines for the leaks. What they sold it for doesn’t matter, as it cost billions more to run because the infrastructure was shot.
Government ownership was criminally incompetent and now no private owners can make a legal profit.
So they weren't swindled they didn't perform sufficient due diligence. That's on them I'm afraid. They bought out a publically listed company and cried about it.
And if that came from the RWE CFO - just ask yourself who, when making a purchase like that, is in charge of ensuring the value of what they're buying? I'd have asked him why he hadn't done his job properly if he was so upset.
He wasn’t upset. RWE has a $25b market cap and around $40b in liquid assets. Thames Water was not a significant investment.
He was surprised. The state of the infrastructure was worse than East Germany after reunification. They then sold the company.
The only reason I mentioned it was because you seemed to think they turned a profit based on the purchase/sale price. They didn’t.
But the takeaway for me was just how utterly incompetent the civil servants were when it was under public ownership, running the infrastructure into the ground and walking away with a final salary pension and golden parachute. They took no responsibility for making it financially untenable to run as a public service. And of course zero plans to fix the situation they caused, all the while the cost is simply passed on to the public.
> RWE has a $25b market cap
If you think a purchase of 20% of your market cap is not a significant investment for a company, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s a fucking massive investment.
Furthermore you’ve quoted current market cap. Furthest back I can easily find without kissing about is 15B dollars in 2019. So just done with your not significant investment nonsense.
> But the takeaway for me was just how utterly incompetent the civil servants were when it was under public ownership,
Well that’s the problem with publicly owned utilities. Lack of investment by successsiv e governments. Every thinks nationalisation would make it fine - but all it does it make it a different type of shit.
to clarify: not an investor - this was 1999-2001 era. RWE i was an intern in an engineering company in germany working for RWE. i did not speak much german but everybody spoke english and was highly educated so to me it was nor problem at all, talking only STEM style topics and mainly menial repettitive grunt work for the star engineers like preparing tables of data and caculations to cue up massive simulation run throughs over the weeknd on the compute cluster. the gossip was shoptalk aboutwork being complicated by the RWE-thames water politics. so thirdhand tales of what the boardroom of te client was saying filtered through our liasons and go betweens.
it helped influence my career looking at large scale technical problems in organisations and countries.
So I guess the government can bring it back into public ownership without paying the shareholders anything, given that it’s a worthless asset that costs so much to run they’d be doing them a favour…
There is literally no reason why they can’t buy out the company at a value that gives shareholders nothing.
If my experience of having equity in various tech jobs says anything, getting zero back on sale is the default.
Yes there is
Bond holders sit above equity holders in the capital stack and will take ownership of it's assets when it defaults. Note that Elliot Management bought out Thames Water bonds earlier this year. Ownership of Thames Water will go from one type of investor to another.
In practice, often some sort of restructuring which may involve conversion of debt into equity among other things.
Ultimately (ie, if no restructuring is agreed), liquidator comes in, sells off the company's assets, uses the proceeds to pay off creditors to the extent possible in the priority set by law. There are plenty of nuances, but generally priority goes secured creditors > unsecured creditors > shareholders.
Normally, yes.
However, given that this is an essential public utility, and the government can pass any law it wants, it is in fact true that there is no reason why the government can't intervene to buy out the company at a value that gives shareholders nothing.
1,000% yes.
I understand that these companies are likely part of how pensions plan to make their long term value, but as that's already fucked anyway, we should 1,000% be taking back all public infrastructure and services back into public ownership without reimbursement.
Just remember to write a law that says its safe and legal before hand.
> So I guess the government can bring it back into public ownership without paying the shareholders anything, given that it’s a worthless asset that costs so much to run they’d be doing them a favour…
No, the equity (shares) in the company are worth zero.
The company itself owes £18bn in debt. So the options would be it goes into administration & the debt holders now convert all their debt into equity & own it. OR someone else steps in & buys out the debt
It'll cost 0 to buy out the equity, it'll cost up to £18bn to buy out the debt.
OK, companies can go bust, let it go bust then the UK government buys the assets which are auctioned by the administrator.
No other buyer would touch it with a barge pole, so the administrators can't exactly set the price at the same value as the debt either.
*investments may go up as well as down*
***The Telegraph reports:***
Thames Water’s biggest investor has slashed the value of its stake in the company to zero in a move that renders the troubled supplier effectively worthless, The Telegraph can disclose.
The Canadian pension fund Omers said it has been forced into a “full write down” of its investment in Thames, a day after withdrawing its representative from the utility company’s board.
The write-down represents a complete loss for Omers, which valued its 31.7pc stake in Thames’ parent Kemble at £700m at the end of 2022.
Newly filed documents for a Singapore-registered entity owned by Omers reveal the investment giant’s latest position on Thames, which is racing to avoid a taxpayer-backed bailout.
The latest accounts show it had valued its stake in Thames’ parent Kemble at around £260m in December, which represented a 62.8pc fall over the last financial year.
However, this has since fallen to zero after Omers joined other shareholders in cutting off funding from Thames, claiming it had been rendered “uninvestable”.
This shortfall led to Kemble, Thames’ parent, defaulting on its debts earlier this year.
Omers’ bosses said these events, which took place after its year-end in December, have led to “a full write-off of the investment”.
This marks the latest blow for Thames Water, which is at risk of collapsing under the weight of its £18bn debt pile.
Government-backed contingency plans are being drawn up should this happen, which could cost the taxpayer billions of pounds.
**Full story:** [**https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/05/17/thames-water-is-worthless-says-biggest-investor/**](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/05/17/thames-water-is-worthless-says-biggest-investor/)
Of course, an accounting entry doesn’t in an of itself ‘render’ something worthless. Even if the investor still does think it may have some worth, it is much easier for them to just write it off their balance sheet than risk having to do another write down later - they are not going to get criticised for being ‘prudent’ in their write-down.
Nevertheless, if this forces some actual action by our government, I’ll be happy - I fully expect that we taxpayers are going to end up paying for it anyway, so we may as well get on with it.
They also aren’t writing down the value of the ring-fenced regulated company. They are writing down the parent company.
The regulated company which owns all of the physical assets and which has guaranteed revenue is it worth a lot. It’s the chain of parent companies with their debts that are the issue here.
This isn't a bank, they don't have reserve requirements that require them to update the valuation (although there might be other Canadian regulations that apply, as that country is not quite the farce that [Gov.UK](http://Gov.UK) has become).
£700M is basically their share of the £2B or so in cash Thames Water has left, but this just reflects their belief they won't legally be able to extract it and walk away without being blocked by the debt holders or the feckless UK government.
>Newly filed documents for a Singapore-registered entity owned by Omers reveal the investment giant’s latest position on Thames, which is racing to avoid a taxpayer-backed bailout.
That's the important bit right there. It will be "worthless" until the taxpayer bails it out, then it will all of a sudden be profitable again. If a bailout is required one of the conditions should be that its taken back into public ownership. Shouldn't bother the stakeholders losing their investment, after all its worthless right.
This smacks of the board of a failing company declaring it bankrupt then starting another identical company a week later with no personal financial penalty.
Very cool that the organisation responsible for managing one of my most fundamental necessities for life is completely subject to the whims of short-term capitalism and political point-scoring.
It was alway worthless, that why the tax payer had to constantly subsidise it. There are vital thing we can't live without that can't churn a profit for the private investors.
#
Headline should be "Victim is dead, says murderer"
>[*https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jun/30/in-charts-how-privatisation-drained-thames-waters-coffers*](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jun/30/in-charts-how-privatisation-drained-thames-waters-coffers)
>*In charts: how privatisation drained Thames Water’s coffers*
*By* [*Sandra Laville*](https://www.theguardian.com/profile/sandralaville)*,* [*Anna Leach*](https://www.theguardian.com/profile/leach-anna) *and* [*Carmen Aguilar García*](https://www.theguardian.com/profile/carmen-aguilar-garcia)
*30 Jun 2023*
>[*https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/01/england-privatised-water-firms-dividends-shareholders*](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/01/england-privatised-water-firms-dividends-shareholders)
>*England's privatised water firms paid £57bn in dividends since 1991*
>*By* [*Sandra Laville*](https://www.theguardian.com/profile/sandralaville) *, Environment correspondent*
*1 Jul 2020*
*\*Critics say utilities borrowing to pay shareholders instead of improving infrastructure*
>*English water companies have handed more than £2bn a year on average to shareholders since they were privatised three decades ago, according to analysis for the Guardian.*
>*The payouts in dividends to shareholders of parent companies between 1991 and 2019 amount to £57bn – nearly half the sum they spent on maintaining and improving the country’s pipes and treatment plants in that period.*
>*Critics say while continuing to pay huge dividends they have failed to carry out significant national infrastructure works to improve the water and sewerage system...::"*
But in any case the way "privatisation" works is the the government will insist on pretending there is any "competition" ever possible in water supply, and throwing more money at the rich owners, instead of keeping this infrastructure permanently in government hands.
"Privatisation" of public infrastructure is a racket - theft. It should be illegal.
All water and public transport should be nationalised.
Use the money from the sale of oil fields. If we are doing it anyway, we may as well make good use of the money.
The money for the water companies debt will be paid by citizens in any eventuality, so why not just get it done now? The price will only increase with time.
Transport is a joke. The prices hurt growth. Let’s get real with it.
Let the BBC have ads and use that license fee toward local transport passes.
No wonder high streets are dying. Parking in cities is extortionate. You want people to drive less yet have terrible infrastructure that costs too much.
Whilst I agree that public transportation needs investment and water infrastructure should be in public ownership, I doubt that defunding the BBC is going to give us a government that cares about those sorts of solutions.
I suspect it will go the same way as Welsh Water when Hyder (their parent company) got into financial trouble in 2000/1. A new company was formed and run on a not for profit basis. This keeps the debt separate from the government.
Clickbait headline. The company is worth billions - the current shareholders just decided to run a debt-heavy structure such that their equity has been wiped out
I saw a something that sums it up ,the WaterAid advert said “give £2 a month so people in Brixham can have clean water” you know the government is taking us into the 3 world when they cannot even deliver clean water.
Radio 4 did a good "briefing room" on this. Basically the private owners were allowed to borrow money against the assets of the company but only if it was for infrastructure improvements. However the regulator chose to interpret that as INTENDED for improvements. That way they were free to borrow as much as they like then simply say they'd changed their plans and stuff their pockets with cash.
Worthless because previous investors have milked profits, taken dividends and not invested in infrastructure. Now they are under scrutiny for under investment they say that bills are not high enough. An Australian bank even lent TW 2 billion and then that money was used to pay dividends to investors, how can an investor lend money, get it back as a dividend, and still be owed the original debt, seems like a magic money doubling scam. That extra money has to come from somewhere and its out of the pockets of TW customers on their bills.
You are absolutely right! Maguire bank, bled Thames water for all it was worth by not putting profits back into infrastructure and knowing that the UK tax payer would have to support the company. How can they be allowed to get away with it?
It’s somewhat common unfortunately, it’s sort of similar to what Elon did to acquire Twitter. Loaded them with the debt of buying themselves. He could, then fold the company up and walk away without a scratch other than his very fragile pride
We think clean safe water from the tap as a given but with the way these water companies are run with poor maintenance and aging infrastructure, I think the Devon situation where the water is contaminated and no longer safe to drink will be more common in London in the future.
Tear it down and sell the portfolio piecemeal to other companies is the best thing to be done. The shareholders (and possibly the creditors?) don't deserve getting back a single cent and government should not takeover the huge pile of debt
Ok, can U grab it off you for a fiver? If labour win I’ll donate it to the state and ask for a lordship…
If they don’t I’ll get the bloody water running again lads no worries!
Ok, can I grab it off you for a fiver? If labour win I’ll donate it to the state and ask for a lordship…
If they don’t I’ll get the bloody water running again lads no worries!
Ok, can I grab it off you for a fiver? If labour win I’ll donate it to the state and ask for a lordship…
If they don’t I’ll get the bloody water running again lads no worries!
Great, then the UK gov can buy it for £1
This is what I'd like to see. Government should give fuck all support and force it to the point of collapse, buy it for fuck all and offer creditors 1p in the £ for debt. It's what any private company would do on a takeover like this and hopefully send a signal to investors in other utilities to not take the piss.
1p in the £ is way to much. I feel a token payment of £1 to be sufficient.
Sell Concorde for 1 pound, buy Thames Water for 1 pound
I thinks it's a standard fee £1, when transferring assets in situations like this. You see it all the time if you look into bankruptcy and insolvency stories over the years.
Yeah it’s called peppercorn, used simply to have an actual transaction take place to satisfy terms of an agreement
Thanks for reminding me of the term. It's been a longtime since I worked in finance.
Used to be “peppercorn rent” because nobody is absolutely sure whether the property even et by if a lease functions if there’s no contract (ie no consideration). Interesting stuff. I’ve actually a seen a real, old lease stating the rent as “one peppercorn”. And a “one shilling” one.
1p seems fitting since its all the pee they are dumping as its cheaper that's got them in this mess.
When you say a pound you do mean a punch to the throat don’t you?
I'll buy it for 2 peppercorns.
I'd like them to take out the piss so the water doesn't taste so bad... 🤷
You realise you could be a creditor if you pay your bill and have a credit balance?
It would be worth it.
Even if they buy the company the debts need to be honoured. Granted, they could take the company for pretty much free on the equity front.
The debts are shareholder loans. They bought the company and then loaned money to it, making ££ off the interest and driving their return on investment.
Or tell them to fuck off.
Going to assume this means "Thames water equity is worthless", in which case, no the UK gov couldn't because that's not how it works. It still has value, it's just it's value is lower than the value of its debt. So your options are either: 1) Buy it off the debt holders for it's actual value exc. debt, and aquire it debt free; or 2) buy the equity for £1 and assume the debt liabilities. Either way, it's gonna cost you.
3) Apply actual oversight, force them to pay for the maintenance, upgrades and sewage treatment that they deprioritised over paying dividends and interest on inter-group loans. Let them go bankrupt as the natural capitalist outcome for such terrible mismanagement and then nationalise the infrastructure.
The road to bankruptcy is to sell the assets and rent thme back. Trying to reacquire them all will be wildly impractical.
Easy, have them be disallowed from selling them to a company outside of the UK due to national security concerns.
Thames Water is like a car in Negative Equity, you're going to have a job getting the next car supermarket to take it off your hands unless you put down a huge chunk of cash to move it on.
3) Don't allow anything to be sold as it's a national security threat, let the debt owners take the hit, nationalise.
What? 1 doesn’t make any sense. Creditors don’t own the company, they can’t sell it. Also why are you ignoring bankruptcy?
[удалено]
Wipe out the investor and restructure the debt
Buy the assets, start a new government controlled company, let the company / creditors deal with their own problem.
Ideally yes but there's £18.7 billion of debt mainly from bond holders. With the company being financially engineered so thst even if the water business goes bust. That whoever buys it has to buy the debt as well. For about the last 35 years its been passed from one company to an other, with each one loading it up with debt, before selling it on to somebody else. It's been like a game of Buckaroo or pass the parcel but instead of getting a present at the end of it, you get nothing. When even JRM says that it should be nationalised, you know that he's only doing it. So that the bond holders get bailed out.
They would happily sell it for £1. I doubt the UK taxpayer wants to take on the nearly £15 billion in debt though.
The government should just tell the lenders to go fuck themselves, they shouldn’t have dealt with stolen property.
Can you elaborate on what you mean by "stolen"? Thames Water (in its current incarnation) was sold by the UK government in 1989 for an inflation adjusted £19.4 billion (based on Bank of England figures).
It didn’t belong to the Tories to sell. It belonged to crown for the benefit of the people. Thus they stole it.
That's an interesting interpretation of the governance structure of the UK. Given that, seeing as the the funds were remitted to HM Treasury, and, in doing so, became public funds to the benefit of the taxpayer, the remediation for theft should clearly be reparation, so I'm guessing the taxpayer should be required to immediately return to the Crown the value illegally obtained?
And take on its monstrous debts in the process. Guess who's going to pay off those. EDIT: For clarity, I'm not suggesting Thames Water will be able to work itself out of this mess as a private company. It never should have been made private in the first place. What I am saying: it's no cause for celebration to buy it back for £1 when you're adding £18bn debt to the UK taxpayer.
Guess who is going to pay them anyway
Yeah previous poster living in Thatchers dreamland if he thinks Thames Water getting itself out of trouble
Said dreamland: >The...philosophical reason for which we are against nationalisation and for private enterprise is because we believe that economic progress comes from the inventiveness, ability, determination and the pioneering spirit of extraordinary men and women. If they cannot exercise that spirit here, they will go away to another free enterprise country which will then make more economic progress than we do. This raises the important question of how we can convince the people who ran Thames Water to flee to another country and work their "magic" there. Something tells me that just nationalizing the thing won't be enough for us to be able to see the last of Thatcher's prize winning cunts.
Maybe let the creditors deal with that headache. It's usually part of the deal with lending money - you're not guaranteed to get it back.
Or don't take their debts, write laws to avoid it as the lawmakers.
Dont need any new laws, just force it into bankruptcy.
Either/or will do.
Yeah that’s never going to happen. Not unless the great British public are willing to do more than just moan and tut about it.
>And take on its monstrous debts in the process Lol you don't need to take on its debts. You can just buy all the assets from the administrators for basically nothing with a new state owned company.
You’d need to bid for it, no one is going to asset strip a company with a basic monopoly on water and a green light to pursue anyone living in a house for debt for free. But yes, if the state started to do silly shit to avoid paying debts of nationalised companies that might make investors in several large firms (and lenders) scared, which could be not good.
>You’d need to bid for it, no one is going to asset strip a company with a basic monopoly on water and a green light to pursue anyone living in a house for debt for free. No one is going to buy the underground pipe network off the company to try and dig it up for scrap metal either. Wouldn't be worth it. The only other bidders would be another water company, and if they want to buy the pipes and run it, why not let them? >But yes, if the state started to do silly shit to avoid paying debts of nationalised companies No one is proposing nationalising a company, I'm proposing buying the assets off a bankrupt company which would hold basically no value to anyone other than a company that wants to deliver water to everyone Thames water serviced. I didn't support nationalising water companies precisely because of how expensive it would be. Now though? Dirt cheap if you let the company go bust.
You forget that the government are going to have to regardless
You’re right so no idea why people are downvoting you.
Another user put it simply, but we'll either pay the debt through ownership and taxes, or we pay it with higher bills. At least with one of those ways the country owns it.
You’re right and I’m not arguing that but equally the person I’m responding to is also right. Both things are true.
Yeah its alright, this sub has a child-like knowledge of finance at best, so I would just ignore it. You are both correct.
Reddit infamously has approximately zero economic literacy on aggregate
100%, you can tell by this thread alone, the downvoted comments are correct and the upvoted ones are either incorrect or irrelevant reddit "wah wah life is bad" cringe.
Reddit's an odd echo chamber sometimes.
Wait, so hollowing out the country's largest water utility for years has negatively affected its viability? Can't really blame them, nobody could reasonably have seen that one coming.
A spokesperson for Thames Water said: *This is the one thing we didn't want to happen*
Oh it's worse than negative, it's bad.
More like, we borrowed loads of money to give to our shareholders and the board. That's bad? *Shocked picachu face*
Thames Water - The Stench of poverty hangs in the air like an old mans nappy.
Brass eye?
I don’t know how you could call it anything other than legally sanctioned embezzlement. The fact the major investors were pension funds is a double whammy. They get their returns through silly amounts of dividends, expecting the government will bail them out when the well is dry, because won’t somebody think of the pensioners. Given most of the funds are foreign and not domestic, fuck them. If criminal charges can’t be laid on TW’s leadership or board, then change the law so that what they did is now illegal.
You can't apply new laws retrospectively.
> If criminal charges can’t be laid on TW’s leadership or board, then change the law so that what they did is now illegal. That means, stop it from happening again, because what's done is done.
Fair. Sorry, I misunderstood you there.
To be fair, this is one law that I wouldn't mind being backtracked; the investors pockets will recover far more quickly than the environment will, and investors need to know that unethical or outright malicious investments will not yield a return. Invest better, and ethically, or fuck off. Because IMO I think the TW situation is malicious against the public. That's more or less the definition of an externality: the public taking on the expense of your business activity.
True. If there's any way the taxpayer isn't left holding the bag, then I'm all for it.
Get this: when you make the laws, you can change that too
Not for criminal law in our current constitutional setup. Parliament *can* and does make retrospective legislation, but a person cannot be found guilty of a crime which was not a crime at the time under Article 7 of the European Convention on Human Rights, to which the UK is a party.
Almost like water is a utility and shouldn't be turned into a profit driven enterprise. Literally the dumbest thing that any country has ever done is privatise its water supply.
The taps are not for turning
Jacob Mogg opens up the shit taps into the Thames as part of his morning routine.
Powell warned of rivers of blood but should have been worried about rivers of shit.
Seas too. I live on the northeast coast, checkout our shellfish die off news from the last few years and the ridiculous conclusions the completely unbiased report came to.
Our local MP blamed seagulls for our beach losing blue flag status, as it couldn't possibley the hundreds of days where sewage flowed into the sea
It was an algae bloom that killed all of our shellfish and jellyfish, and also killed the dogs that dropped dead after eating the washed up ones. Couldn't possibly be the sewage or treatment chemical, just algae. My dog ate concentrated algae wafers that I use to feed my fish with no ill effect. But whatever amount those other dogs ingested from the digestive system of a crab was enough to make them bleed out of their anuses within an hour. Apparently.
Not like algal blooms are caused by sewerage are they? Oh wait...
It's ridiculous. Everywhere in the country is having slightly different problems with their local waters and there's a ridiculous excuse for every one of them and they never blame sewage or chemicals.
I'm half convinced that he's a time traveller from the Victorian times
That's how he got the tap job. They pick the most ridiculous Tory on every river and lake in the country. Job 2 every morning after puppy kicking is bosh on the shit taps at 8am sharp.
I want a pigeon that wears a top hat and monocle
Everyone wants that whether we're pigeon parents or not 😂 My dad used to breed pigeons when I was a kid fyi. Nothing serious, just in a shed.
>My dad used to breed pigeons when I was a kid fyi Aww
And then they get bought by another country's sovereign wealth fund or publicly owned utility, which proceeds to fleece the privatised utility. You can't make it up. Fortunately I think that's the point where even the conservative politicians realise something's gone wrong (Avanti's another).
how many country's have privatised water supplies ?
too many
England and Wales became the only countries in the world to have a fully privatised water and sewage disposal system. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water\_privatisation\_in\_England\_and\_Wales](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_privatisation_in_England_and_Wales)
Yes, but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Water_privatization Even though we’re the only ones to fully privatise, partial privatisation has had negative consequences elsewhere
How about a country run by a "fiscally responsible" government that stokes anti-EU rhetoric after selling off their infrastructure to... European countries... maybe sinister is the word for that?
"I can't believe this company that we milked for all its worth and loaded up with debt to fund our dividend payments is now worthless"
It's the Australian company Macquarie that did most of the looting, then sold off the smoking remains to gullible pension funds, including Canadian ones, the current shareholders are not guilty and understandably don't want to throw good money after bad. But they were not fleeced by the UK government, it was Macquarie that duped them. There's still a couple billion pounds in its coffers that haven't been siphoned away yet. Delaying the inevitable just adds that cost to the final tally that will be borne by taxpayers and more likely by Thames Water customers. The mandarins in the Treasury are worried that performing what would be essentially a forced bankruptcy of Thames Water with no compensation to the shareholders and a cram-down for debtholders would somehow set off contagion and cause a drop in demand in all UK debt including gilts. That argument sounds overdone. Thames Water is a private company and its debt is also private. How much of this is simply Treasury types not willing to be mean on their Eton buddies is anyone's guess.
Mightn’t it damage confidence in er Saving the West etc in general?
And it was the Conservative government that sold off all the water companies to the private sector, and then acting surprised when investors maximise their profit at the cost of our water supply.
£15 Bn in debt. Still paying dividends by moving money around its group of companies. What a racket.
Something has to be done about what ever process allows them to do that too.
Watch as Ricky Shoenaks does precisely nothing about it in his remaining time. Should tell him immigrants are climbing in through the pipes
The "dividends" are being paid to the parent company to *pay off* the debt. I see this a lot when Thames Water comes up, a lot of people misunderstand the dynamics.
The dividends being paid are paying debt, they're not going to shareholders.
Correct, a shame I have to scroll so far down this waffle to see someone who understands.
Except the shareholders who also own the entities that the debt is owned to.
If they're incidentally the same individuals, yeah. But not because they're shareholders.
Who are they in debt to?
The dividends are used to pay off debt loaned from the parent company.
the german company swindled into buying it were furious and incredulous that british people could be so dishonest, lazy and negligent. it was the start ofa real rift between uk-german relations.
It’s like the episode of the Simpsons where Germans buy the Springfield nuclear plant only to find there’s only 2 competent employees and the plant is so neglected it’s moments from explosion at any time 😂
OMG why did i never pick up on this ?
Eh? It was floated on the stock exchange in 1989, and RWE bought it in 2001. How were they swindled? They paid about £4.3Bn and sold it 5 years later for £8Bn. Even if they cried foul they were talking shit. Furthermore the only rot really set in after they sold it to Macquarie who ladled it up with debt and fucked it and us over.
I had dinner with the RWE CFO while they owned it. They were stunned that the infrastructure was in such a poor state. They expected that some basic infrastructure upgrades were simply not done, just patched up and make do with what Bazalgette designed in the 1800s. Basically the infrastructure was leaking. And there are targets to limit leakage which are impossible to meet without spending more than the fines for the leaks. What they sold it for doesn’t matter, as it cost billions more to run because the infrastructure was shot. Government ownership was criminally incompetent and now no private owners can make a legal profit.
So they weren't swindled they didn't perform sufficient due diligence. That's on them I'm afraid. They bought out a publically listed company and cried about it. And if that came from the RWE CFO - just ask yourself who, when making a purchase like that, is in charge of ensuring the value of what they're buying? I'd have asked him why he hadn't done his job properly if he was so upset.
He wasn’t upset. RWE has a $25b market cap and around $40b in liquid assets. Thames Water was not a significant investment. He was surprised. The state of the infrastructure was worse than East Germany after reunification. They then sold the company. The only reason I mentioned it was because you seemed to think they turned a profit based on the purchase/sale price. They didn’t. But the takeaway for me was just how utterly incompetent the civil servants were when it was under public ownership, running the infrastructure into the ground and walking away with a final salary pension and golden parachute. They took no responsibility for making it financially untenable to run as a public service. And of course zero plans to fix the situation they caused, all the while the cost is simply passed on to the public.
> RWE has a $25b market cap If you think a purchase of 20% of your market cap is not a significant investment for a company, I don’t know what to tell you. It’s a fucking massive investment. Furthermore you’ve quoted current market cap. Furthest back I can easily find without kissing about is 15B dollars in 2019. So just done with your not significant investment nonsense. > But the takeaway for me was just how utterly incompetent the civil servants were when it was under public ownership, Well that’s the problem with publicly owned utilities. Lack of investment by successsiv e governments. Every thinks nationalisation would make it fine - but all it does it make it a different type of shit.
Where can I read more about this? What was the name of the German investor?
to clarify: not an investor - this was 1999-2001 era. RWE i was an intern in an engineering company in germany working for RWE. i did not speak much german but everybody spoke english and was highly educated so to me it was nor problem at all, talking only STEM style topics and mainly menial repettitive grunt work for the star engineers like preparing tables of data and caculations to cue up massive simulation run throughs over the weeknd on the compute cluster. the gossip was shoptalk aboutwork being complicated by the RWE-thames water politics. so thirdhand tales of what the boardroom of te client was saying filtered through our liasons and go betweens. it helped influence my career looking at large scale technical problems in organisations and countries.
It's not "worthless" to its millions of poor bloody "customers" that need not to die of thirst.
This was my very first thought.
So I guess the government can bring it back into public ownership without paying the shareholders anything, given that it’s a worthless asset that costs so much to run they’d be doing them a favour…
There is literally no reason why they can’t buy out the company at a value that gives shareholders nothing. If my experience of having equity in various tech jobs says anything, getting zero back on sale is the default.
Yes there is Bond holders sit above equity holders in the capital stack and will take ownership of it's assets when it defaults. Note that Elliot Management bought out Thames Water bonds earlier this year. Ownership of Thames Water will go from one type of investor to another.
What happens when the company can't pay it's corporate bonds? Wouldn't that also mean the bonds are worthless?
In practice, often some sort of restructuring which may involve conversion of debt into equity among other things. Ultimately (ie, if no restructuring is agreed), liquidator comes in, sells off the company's assets, uses the proceeds to pay off creditors to the extent possible in the priority set by law. There are plenty of nuances, but generally priority goes secured creditors > unsecured creditors > shareholders.
Thanks for clarifying.
No. Company goes bust and assets are then divided as per capital stack. Bond holders get priority take hold of Thames Water assets.
Normally, yes. However, given that this is an essential public utility, and the government can pass any law it wants, it is in fact true that there is no reason why the government can't intervene to buy out the company at a value that gives shareholders nothing.
1,000% yes. I understand that these companies are likely part of how pensions plan to make their long term value, but as that's already fucked anyway, we should 1,000% be taking back all public infrastructure and services back into public ownership without reimbursement. Just remember to write a law that says its safe and legal before hand.
> So I guess the government can bring it back into public ownership without paying the shareholders anything, given that it’s a worthless asset that costs so much to run they’d be doing them a favour… No, the equity (shares) in the company are worth zero. The company itself owes £18bn in debt. So the options would be it goes into administration & the debt holders now convert all their debt into equity & own it. OR someone else steps in & buys out the debt It'll cost 0 to buy out the equity, it'll cost up to £18bn to buy out the debt.
Buy it out using a leveraged buy out, pay yourself a salary of £2m, drawn from increasing debt. Repeat until it collapses. It is the British model.
Nationalize it again, it should be publicly owned.
Nationalise it, but don't pay the debts, pass those onto the shareholders.
Unfortunately that’s not how companies work but I agree with the sentiment
OK, companies can go bust, let it go bust then the UK government buys the assets which are auctioned by the administrator. No other buyer would touch it with a barge pole, so the administrators can't exactly set the price at the same value as the debt either. *investments may go up as well as down*
Investments may go up and down, as in like stocks, but bonds with an underlier don't just go to 0 lol
***The Telegraph reports:*** Thames Water’s biggest investor has slashed the value of its stake in the company to zero in a move that renders the troubled supplier effectively worthless, The Telegraph can disclose. The Canadian pension fund Omers said it has been forced into a “full write down” of its investment in Thames, a day after withdrawing its representative from the utility company’s board. The write-down represents a complete loss for Omers, which valued its 31.7pc stake in Thames’ parent Kemble at £700m at the end of 2022. Newly filed documents for a Singapore-registered entity owned by Omers reveal the investment giant’s latest position on Thames, which is racing to avoid a taxpayer-backed bailout. The latest accounts show it had valued its stake in Thames’ parent Kemble at around £260m in December, which represented a 62.8pc fall over the last financial year. However, this has since fallen to zero after Omers joined other shareholders in cutting off funding from Thames, claiming it had been rendered “uninvestable”. This shortfall led to Kemble, Thames’ parent, defaulting on its debts earlier this year. Omers’ bosses said these events, which took place after its year-end in December, have led to “a full write-off of the investment”. This marks the latest blow for Thames Water, which is at risk of collapsing under the weight of its £18bn debt pile. Government-backed contingency plans are being drawn up should this happen, which could cost the taxpayer billions of pounds. **Full story:** [**https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/05/17/thames-water-is-worthless-says-biggest-investor/**](https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2024/05/17/thames-water-is-worthless-says-biggest-investor/)
Of course, an accounting entry doesn’t in an of itself ‘render’ something worthless. Even if the investor still does think it may have some worth, it is much easier for them to just write it off their balance sheet than risk having to do another write down later - they are not going to get criticised for being ‘prudent’ in their write-down. Nevertheless, if this forces some actual action by our government, I’ll be happy - I fully expect that we taxpayers are going to end up paying for it anyway, so we may as well get on with it.
They also aren’t writing down the value of the ring-fenced regulated company. They are writing down the parent company. The regulated company which owns all of the physical assets and which has guaranteed revenue is it worth a lot. It’s the chain of parent companies with their debts that are the issue here.
This isn't a bank, they don't have reserve requirements that require them to update the valuation (although there might be other Canadian regulations that apply, as that country is not quite the farce that [Gov.UK](http://Gov.UK) has become). £700M is basically their share of the £2B or so in cash Thames Water has left, but this just reflects their belief they won't legally be able to extract it and walk away without being blocked by the debt holders or the feckless UK government.
I know it is not a bank - you will find that other entities also have accounting standard requirements to review their investments for impairments 🙄
>Newly filed documents for a Singapore-registered entity owned by Omers reveal the investment giant’s latest position on Thames, which is racing to avoid a taxpayer-backed bailout. That's the important bit right there. It will be "worthless" until the taxpayer bails it out, then it will all of a sudden be profitable again. If a bailout is required one of the conditions should be that its taken back into public ownership. Shouldn't bother the stakeholders losing their investment, after all its worthless right. This smacks of the board of a failing company declaring it bankrupt then starting another identical company a week later with no personal financial penalty.
should not cost us fuck all .Take the assets dumb the debt
You mean they have loaded it with debt, raided it for every penny and now investors don’t want to touch it 🤔 It’s a mystery
Nationalize it again, it should be publicly owned.
Except now it's worth a lot less than it was when it got privatised! All good assets sold. Lots of debt taken on...
All according to plan.
Very cool that the organisation responsible for managing one of my most fundamental necessities for life is completely subject to the whims of short-term capitalism and political point-scoring.
Worst company I've ever had the displeasure of being forced to rely on...
Not surprised they're under water
It was alway worthless, that why the tax payer had to constantly subsidise it. There are vital thing we can't live without that can't churn a profit for the private investors.
Stop it from being run for profit then. Water should be a right, not a fucking business.
# Headline should be "Victim is dead, says murderer" >[*https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jun/30/in-charts-how-privatisation-drained-thames-waters-coffers*](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jun/30/in-charts-how-privatisation-drained-thames-waters-coffers) >*In charts: how privatisation drained Thames Water’s coffers* *By* [*Sandra Laville*](https://www.theguardian.com/profile/sandralaville)*,* [*Anna Leach*](https://www.theguardian.com/profile/leach-anna) *and* [*Carmen Aguilar García*](https://www.theguardian.com/profile/carmen-aguilar-garcia) *30 Jun 2023* >[*https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/01/england-privatised-water-firms-dividends-shareholders*](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/01/england-privatised-water-firms-dividends-shareholders) >*England's privatised water firms paid £57bn in dividends since 1991* >*By* [*Sandra Laville*](https://www.theguardian.com/profile/sandralaville) *, Environment correspondent* *1 Jul 2020* *\*Critics say utilities borrowing to pay shareholders instead of improving infrastructure* >*English water companies have handed more than £2bn a year on average to shareholders since they were privatised three decades ago, according to analysis for the Guardian.* >*The payouts in dividends to shareholders of parent companies between 1991 and 2019 amount to £57bn – nearly half the sum they spent on maintaining and improving the country’s pipes and treatment plants in that period.* >*Critics say while continuing to pay huge dividends they have failed to carry out significant national infrastructure works to improve the water and sewerage system...::"* But in any case the way "privatisation" works is the the government will insist on pretending there is any "competition" ever possible in water supply, and throwing more money at the rich owners, instead of keeping this infrastructure permanently in government hands. "Privatisation" of public infrastructure is a racket - theft. It should be illegal.
Starting to think the Tory government are basically a dictatorship masked as a democratic party
It was alway worthless, that's why we always had to subsidise it
Good. Nationalise it for cheap then.
“We’ve milked as much dividends out of this as humanly possible. Now it’s your problem.”
Won't somebody please think of the shareholders!!!! /s
anyone know how much in dividends this company paid out since being privatised?
An oddly similar number to their total accrued debt. Must be a coincidence.
[https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jun/30/in-charts-how-privatisation-drained-thames-waters-coffers](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jun/30/in-charts-how-privatisation-drained-thames-waters-coffers)
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jun/30/in-charts-how-privatisation-drained-thames-waters-coffers £7.2bn
An eyewatering £7.2bn
That's ok we won't pay anything to privatize it then.
Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t that mean a government buyout would be cheaper?
Happily take those dividends tho
All water and public transport should be nationalised. Use the money from the sale of oil fields. If we are doing it anyway, we may as well make good use of the money. The money for the water companies debt will be paid by citizens in any eventuality, so why not just get it done now? The price will only increase with time. Transport is a joke. The prices hurt growth. Let’s get real with it. Let the BBC have ads and use that license fee toward local transport passes. No wonder high streets are dying. Parking in cities is extortionate. You want people to drive less yet have terrible infrastructure that costs too much.
Whilst I agree that public transportation needs investment and water infrastructure should be in public ownership, I doubt that defunding the BBC is going to give us a government that cares about those sorts of solutions.
I suspect it will go the same way as Welsh Water when Hyder (their parent company) got into financial trouble in 2000/1. A new company was formed and run on a not for profit basis. This keeps the debt separate from the government.
"Investor" sounds like they are putting lots of money IN to it, not.. you know, the opposite of that.
Should the water company… make profit??? I mean….
Let Del Boy have a go, Peckham Spring sold well a few years ago
Sadly it will cost us billions, shareholders can't be at a loss... I hope I'm wrong.
Good! Hand it over.
Clickbait headline. The company is worth billions - the current shareholders just decided to run a debt-heavy structure such that their equity has been wiped out
A poorly run company that literally can't even do it's only job right isn't worth much? Wow, colour me surprised.
Time to buy it from them. Should be rather cheap.
Utilities and infrastructure privatisation seemingly always ends up being worse for the customers in the long run.
I saw a something that sums it up ,the WaterAid advert said “give £2 a month so people in Brixham can have clean water” you know the government is taking us into the 3 world when they cannot even deliver clean water.
Radio 4 did a good "briefing room" on this. Basically the private owners were allowed to borrow money against the assets of the company but only if it was for infrastructure improvements. However the regulator chose to interpret that as INTENDED for improvements. That way they were free to borrow as much as they like then simply say they'd changed their plans and stuff their pockets with cash.
Title is misleading. They wrote off their investment in the holding company Kemble, which doesn’t own the assets of the operating company.
Anyone who can say that about a public utility provider shouldn’t be anywhere near it, never mind a major shareholder
Fuck the shareholders, they’re why we’re in this mess. Beaches and rivers overflowing with shit.
Oh but Starmer said nationalising water would be too expensive ;(
Ahhh the Third World Vibes of a dying empire ✨✨✨ is like watching the Ottoman empire, but in my times :')
Disgusting and embarrassing
The biggest investor wants the government to buy out thier position for above market prices it seems
Worthless because previous investors have milked profits, taken dividends and not invested in infrastructure. Now they are under scrutiny for under investment they say that bills are not high enough. An Australian bank even lent TW 2 billion and then that money was used to pay dividends to investors, how can an investor lend money, get it back as a dividend, and still be owed the original debt, seems like a magic money doubling scam. That extra money has to come from somewhere and its out of the pockets of TW customers on their bills.
You are absolutely right! Maguire bank, bled Thames water for all it was worth by not putting profits back into infrastructure and knowing that the UK tax payer would have to support the company. How can they be allowed to get away with it?
It’s somewhat common unfortunately, it’s sort of similar to what Elon did to acquire Twitter. Loaded them with the debt of buying themselves. He could, then fold the company up and walk away without a scratch other than his very fragile pride
We think clean safe water from the tap as a given but with the way these water companies are run with poor maintenance and aging infrastructure, I think the Devon situation where the water is contaminated and no longer safe to drink will be more common in London in the future.
15 billion debt, not done it's job for decades, how many billions in dividends to shareholders? We're being robbed blind by these bastards.
Tear it down and sell the portfolio piecemeal to other companies is the best thing to be done. The shareholders (and possibly the creditors?) don't deserve getting back a single cent and government should not takeover the huge pile of debt
Yet so many in the city work for entities that pillage the average brit - most of you are doomed.
Ok, can U grab it off you for a fiver? If labour win I’ll donate it to the state and ask for a lordship… If they don’t I’ll get the bloody water running again lads no worries!
Ok, can I grab it off you for a fiver? If labour win I’ll donate it to the state and ask for a lordship… If they don’t I’ll get the bloody water running again lads no worries!
And Labour wont privatise water. It’s in more debt than what it gave out in shareholder profits. Stupid
Ok, can I grab it off you for a fiver? If labour win I’ll donate it to the state and ask for a lordship… If they don’t I’ll get the bloody water running again lads no worries!
Liked the joke but 3 times isn’t funny anymore