Thames Water handed £3 billion lifeline as court approves restructuring plans to save it from financial collapse

34 comments

1. I think regardless of where you sit on the political spectrum, we can agree that private water companies have a license to steal.

2. > The £3 billion loan offered by lenders is expected to come in two instalments, with the first payment to get the company through to the autumn, and the second to be used if the company decides to appeal against Ofwat’s bill rise.

   Does anyone know who the “lenders” are and what the terms of the loan are?

   (It would be interesting to know what the minimum repayments on the loan are, if only the minimum is paid will the debt increase, and under what terms “TWUH” would be defaulting on it)

3. £37.5m paid in dividends in 2023. £1m in wages and benefits paid to the CEO, Chris Weston.
   £3bn of taxpayers money will ensure they keep cashing in, and that’s somehow better than nationalised, not-for-profit utilities.

4. Anyone want to make a bit of money?

   Get into rain, I made billions selling water!

   It comes out of the fucking sky!!

5. Crazy we pay for something that we ourselves are our selves consist 60% of.

6. I sure wish someone would pay me 3 billion quid to run an essential utility into the ground while I syphonned off every penny of value I could. Seems like a sweet deal.

7. Oh for fucks SAKE

   They cannot afford to service their existing debt.
   The cost of the debt is passed to the consumer – despite the debt being primarily a consequence of asset stripping.
   And now they are given license to take on more debt?

   Thames Water only ever had to maintain infrastructure – the water, of course, does not and never has belonged to them. But they neglected to maintain or upgrade the infrastructure while simultaneously pumping literal shit into the water – a resource that belongs to all of us.

   Thames Water is a fucking blight. Shame on them.

8. ‘We’re letting you know our bills for typical metered water and wastewater customers will increase by £16 per month in April. This is because Thatcher thought it a Good idea to privatise utilities and let them be owned by close to evil entities that would load us with debt, shovel dividends to overseas shareholders while letting the infrastructure crumble. Yes there is shit in the rivers and coastlines. But bug eyed vulture capitalism trumps the national interest. So fuck you and your thought that water, power and gas are staples of life that had to be maintained for the good of the nation, not a selling off of the family silver.’

9. CEO of Thames Water right now.
   *Managed to secure a £3 Billion of taxpayer funding. Guess I better pay myself a million quid bonus. *

10. Surely we’ve gone past the point where it’d just he cheaper to buy them out?

11. We need this, without water it would not even be a river.

12. This is a lot like trump bankrupting casinos, w free water falls out of the sky, water companies go bankrupt, go figure

13. Imagine allowing these firms to flush all that money down the drain, and then charge us for the drainage.

14. Shouldn’t they agree that none of that loan should be used for investors ? Otherwise a massive chunk is going to the CEO and their friends

15. From the [BBC article](https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cg7z7ddmd5eo)

    >A second instalment will be used to fund the company as it appeals a decision by Ofwat, the industry regulator, over how much Thames can raise household bills by – a process which could take up to a year.

    >On Friday, Thames launched an appeal to allow it to increase bills by more than the regulator had granted.

    >Ofwat has capped bill rises at 35% over the next five years, but Thames has argued bills need to increase by 53%.

    Absolutely ridiculous that this has been allowed to go ahead, when even the terms of the deal are tacitly admitting that Thames Water cannot survive based on it’s current income.

    Thames Water has failed as a business. All of these ‘lifelines’ are just extending the inevitable (and piling on more debt that I expect they’ll eventually try to make the tax payer pay for).

16. Nice – that covers the dividends for the next few quarters.

17. “Socialism works until you run out of other peoples’ money”

    Well, looks like, once again, capitalism has run out of money and socialism is having to bail it out.

18. For fuck sake. Just nationalise the bloody water system. They’ll space that 3bn and we will get nothing out of it.

19. ….but they’d all rather you complain about train drivers LOL….

20. This shows we, us twats that pay our taxes, have absolutly no control over the running of this county. Thames water was drained of money by Macquarie bank. Macquarie bank drained the money from Thames Water because they realised, of course, that a water company could not go under – no, pun intended – and that the British tax payer would step in and save it. What should have happened is that we go back to Macquarie bank and get our money back. I should say that I am not a Thames Water customer, just a very annoyed tax payer.

21. Mother fuckers got a monopoly on water in their region and they still fuck it up.

22. Privatise the gains and socialise the losses.

    Thanks capitalism!

23. Ridiculous. Shouldnt be giving them any money. Thieving idiots

24. Can someone give a viewpoint from the other side? What would the downfalls be for turning this into a public company? From an outsider looking in it seems like a no brainer BUT I don’t know the intricacies of running a company like this.

    What is the justification for keeping this private?

25. Don’t fret Thames water shareholders, your dividends are safe…

26. Capitalism going to keep capitalising… Let us keep tutting and moaning, surely they’ll listen soon, right…?

27. [deleted]

28. I received a nice letter in the post the other day from my water company. Lots of information on how they have to improve and maintain the infrastructure over the coming years, typical sales talk.

    And ending the letter with “therefore your bill will increase by….”.

    They are all doing it at the same time, disguising it as infrastructure updates. I imagine it should be a continuous process as part of your normal work. The electricity companies can f off too.

29. Disgraceful. Thames water bosses are total fucking thieves.

30. This is ridiculous if they are bust because they loaded the company up with debt like every one of these private utility companies does, then they are getting rewarded for bad business practices and running the company into failure how many MP’s have financial link’s with these companies?

31. Just fucking nationalise it…..

    I think all of us would agree to pay a teeny bit more tax to nationalise all of these industries which are nationalised in almost every other country and we’re here until Thatcher

    We’re in a more precarious debt situation than countries like Greece mainly because the government no longer has any assets because we sold them all

    Why don’t we have a public investment fund and nationalised oil and gas companies aswell 😭

32. Yay!

    Can’t wait to see this exact same headline in a years time!

33. [removed]

34. I mentioned this is another post on Thames Water and its financial difficulties:

    Thames Water declined a Project Manager after interviewing the candidate. That candidate was then hired by a consultancy that Thames Water uses. The candidate was then placed into that very role by the consultancy which the Hiring Manager at TW originally rejected, only now TW are paying silly money a day to the consultancy.

    Absolutely genius.

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