Let’s all remember to smile while getting pounded from behind! Oh, and theirs no lube left.
The way it’s been handled over the years is disgusting. They have just been run as cash machines and like many ‘financed’ companies laden with debt which is slowly creeping up until it swamps them.
> The Australian bank Macquarie has left Thames Water with an extra £2bn debt burden, a BBC investigation shows.
>
> The £2bn was borrowed by Thames Water in 2007 and 2010 but used for the benefit of the bank and its investors, which owned and controlled the UK’s biggest privatised water company.
>
> This was in apparent contravention of conditions laid down by the regulator when Macquarie bought Thames in 2006
.
> In this letter, Sir Peter reveals that, of the £2.8bn acquisition debt, no less than £2bn had subsequently been repaid. Not by Macquarie and its investors, who had originally borrowed the money, but from new borrowings raised by Thames Water through a Cayman Islands subsidiary.
>
> Martin Blaiklock said: “That letter was a red flag to me because it showed clearly that the debt which Macquarie funds had used to buy Thames Water had been transferred over to Thames Water.”
> In his report Mr Elphicke looked at the “gearing” of Thames Water, that is, its ratio of debt compared to the capital in the business. His figures suggested 93% of the business was debt.
>
> Again Thames Water said Mr Elphicke was wrong – because he had used an inappropriate measure of its debt (total creditors rather than net debt) and said the real figure was 76%. That was still pretty stunning to me.
Yeah privatising the utilities has been nothing but a scam from the start. Where exactly is all this investment they’ve been promising all these years? The bills keep going up, the government keeps paying out, and we’ve still got Victorian systems and more raw sewage being pumped into the rivers and seas destroying our ecosystems.
How long till we take a leaf out of the Welsh’s book and renationalise our water?
And Starmer still won’t back nationalisation. Despite the clear evidence that privitised utilities that are profit driven provide substandard services, charge more for their services than is necessary, and do not properly invest in infrastructure.
They do not server the countries interests, they serve their shareholders at our expense
Years of infrastructure neglect by UK Water companies has left us with raw sewage discharges into rivers across the country. Essentially the consumers payments have been diverted from there intended use to pay greedy managers, and share holders. Common theft dressed up as legitimate competitive business and protected by dubious political donations
It’s ok you can just change suppliers due to all the alternatives…
Oh…
Wait…
The utilities telling us ‘we’ll have to charge our customers to make changes that enable us to solve the problem that we haven’t invested for the last 30 years since privatisation and we’ve been profiteering’ is a bit fucking cheeky, tbh.
It just can’t work with shareholders at the helm. The only reason to buy shares is to get a return from them. It isn’t to put money into the companies but to take it out, buying shares doesn’t do that. It’s not like they have a product to have a funding round with, it’s a fixed utility.
Utilities which are critical – and it doesn’t get more critical than water. Should never be in private hands. Selling them off was a massive mistake. Just as big a mistake is not re-nationalising them.
It’s always been and continues to be a con. See ‘[The privatised water industry in the UK. An ATM for investors](https://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/21097/)’ (2018). From the abstract:
>Our econometric analysis suggests that the 40% increase in real household bills was mainly driven by continuously growing interest payments on debt … the debt levels are primarily the result of disproportionate dividend pay-outs, which exceed the privatised companies’ cash balances in all but one year since 1989.
>we show how private equity investors have found innovative financial mechanisms for increasing investor returns that are unrelated to productive activity. The resulting financialised, highly-indebted corporate structures create costs and risks for utilities which raise concerns for social equity … The regulatory toolbox, governed by a narrative of competition, has consistently been biased towards investors and misses much of the scope of financialised corporate extraction.
>enable providers to distinguish between internal dividends – payments between intermediate holding companies in the group – and external dividends to private equity, sovereign wealth and pension funds, which own the entire water and sewage business including the holding companies.
It’s a coprorate shell game and the public continue to be the losers. We should all be angry about this.
This is infuriating. Privatization of utilities sucks.
Privatisation across the board, be it utilities, the care system, prisons, highway maintenance, trains, busses, water, power, etc etc etc…..has been nothing but a complete failure.
Profits are always the priority….they rip us off with ultra insane prices for everything and deliver a woefully terrible service in return.
All it does it line the pockets of a few and screws the country as a whole.
I immediately called bullshit at the title, that would be something like a 90% profit margin.
Reading the article turns out this figure is over a decade, not annually, which is pretty misleading. You can stick any shock figure you like in a headline if you’re going to pick arbitrary timescales.
That aside, as a local monopoly with no customer choice there is absolutely no good reason for it to be privatised. I’d full support nationalising the whole thing.
Oh no, who could possibly have predicted this obvious outcome of levying fines against these shitty monopolies?
Well yeah, the private monopolies were never going to pay, were they?
Bloody criminals how do they keep on getting away with this. Time to boycott these companies ! Don’t pay your water bill.
Government and Parliament are nothing but marketplaces for wide scale corruption at this point and it’s all at our expense, I fail to see how they’re fit for purpose : /
Thatchers model has been a disaster .greed over everything
Any public service that is essential for the general public should be nationalised. Then any profits can go back into the company.
This news was first reported as UK bill payers will need to expect water rates to go up for the cost of them doing the basic job already expected of them. Private companies who spent way to much rewarding themselves realise ooops there is public complaint. WE ONLY DUMPED SEWAGE WITHOUT A STORM 94 TIMES THIS MONTH, USUALLY IT IS 3 BUT… had to give dividends of billions to shareholders. Fuck you rivers, fuck your seas. We profit.
Eat your fish pleb, Barry Jones of CEO $$$$ in Vietnam says fuck em…. they can just eat sewage…
Might as well add in, you are an island surrounded by waters, yet 90% of seafood is imported. where are those Brexit fishing boats. The UK only likes fish that comes from nordic seas like cod
These companies are so highly leveraged due to these stock buy backs if everyone refused to pay their bill the would be bust in a few months.
Ah yes another case where it clearly states on the fucking sign who is responsible for the dumping. But no the normal people who have no say whatsoever where the sewage is dumped are left to pay.
We repeatedly vote to have our country sold off and polluted for the enrichment of the Tory ruling classes – this is what people want our country to be isn’t it otherwise why vote for it?
The only permanent way out is to nationalise and immediately re-privatise all water companies in the UK but this time shares are tied to national insurance numbers with any dividends being paid to shareholders and then taken as tax, this way UK water is nationalised but is safe from being sold by another political party as they would have to buy out 65 million shares individually.
We need to go full Bolshevik on these companies. Seize and nationalise. They have proven again and again, they can’t be trusted or held accountable.
This is working as intended, private profits, socislised costs
Hang on a minute, I thought they were facing £10bn in costs to clean up their own mess??
The thing I wonder is this must be all upper management decisions, the engineers etc must be feeling the same as we do. I wonder what internal morale and messaging is like
Its only been 30 years of getting ripped off, now people waking up to the fact that privatising utilities, and public bodies is a shit thing and ultimately negatively affect the greater populace!!
Open your rose tinted capitalism is good eyes, and smell the fucking shit!!
It fucking stinks!!!
Ah this sucks, I’m probably going to have to avoid the town centres now because of all the protesting that’s bound to be happening there over the next few weeks, you know, all those people, that will be there, to protest an injustice that directly affects them
15bn isn’t going to cover the cost of renewing the network. That money has already been trousered offshore and there’s no way we’re getting it back.
They should be fined for every single discharge. If they are not held accountable they will continue to pollute our environment whilst paying billions to their shareholders.
Utilities should not be run for profit.
I feel like they’re teetering on the edge of people starting to consider direct action.
Private equity has been fleecing our utilities for too long, wait till they get their hands on more of the health service. Our money pays for nothing but dividends for these firms. The same principle applies to the other services that have been privatised including the Post Office. These services do not invest anywhere near enough to improve our countries infrastructure, they divest.
And remember who privatised the water companies promising us a new era in services and assuring us of tough regulations. Yep, the very same Conservative Party.
Nothing to see move on they did what the government asked them and wired a fraction of this into the Tory accounts so all legal and good 👍/s
And sadly, a Labour Government won’t change this one fucking iota. I’m so goddamn depressed about UK politics right now.
They are just about starting to design new reservoirs etc. A reminder that when they were privatised the had no debt and huge land banks. Now all the land has been sold and they have huge debts to keep paying dividends.
To be honest though Dwr Cymru are government owned and not great either.
British Airways, British Aerospace, British Gas, British Oil, British Petroleum, British Telecom, British Water, Powergen, Jaguar-Landrover, Royal Mail.
Just some of OUR assets that the tories have sold for pennies on the pound, so they can cheat their way to further election victories on the basis of a ‘strong’ economy.
It’s almost like the government at the time did not realise that a private company would make money for shareholders at the expense of infrastructure when they privatised the companies.
Sorry of course they knew that but the fat piles of cash they made since has really helped their judgement 🙁
Isn’t everyone with a pension a shareholder? Why do we talk about shareholders with such disdain
At this point I have to ask where is the risk to shareholders? What could the water companies do that would see them be unable to pay a dividend and, god forbid, see shareholder value go down? It feels like shareholders are bing treated as debt holders and I don’t understand why
Nationalise and kick private interests to the curb.
We as citizens and tax payers should be rightfully angry at this complete lack of care to our countries ecosystem and our wellbeing by greedy corporations.
44 comments
Let’s all remember to smile while getting pounded from behind! Oh, and theirs no lube left.
The way it’s been handled over the years is disgusting. They have just been run as cash machines and like many ‘financed’ companies laden with debt which is slowly creeping up until it swamps them.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-41152516 and https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-43133942
> The Australian bank Macquarie has left Thames Water with an extra £2bn debt burden, a BBC investigation shows.
>
> The £2bn was borrowed by Thames Water in 2007 and 2010 but used for the benefit of the bank and its investors, which owned and controlled the UK’s biggest privatised water company.
>
> This was in apparent contravention of conditions laid down by the regulator when Macquarie bought Thames in 2006
.
> In this letter, Sir Peter reveals that, of the £2.8bn acquisition debt, no less than £2bn had subsequently been repaid. Not by Macquarie and its investors, who had originally borrowed the money, but from new borrowings raised by Thames Water through a Cayman Islands subsidiary.
>
> Martin Blaiklock said: “That letter was a red flag to me because it showed clearly that the debt which Macquarie funds had used to buy Thames Water had been transferred over to Thames Water.”
and
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-25717935
> In his report Mr Elphicke looked at the “gearing” of Thames Water, that is, its ratio of debt compared to the capital in the business. His figures suggested 93% of the business was debt.
>
> Again Thames Water said Mr Elphicke was wrong – because he had used an inappropriate measure of its debt (total creditors rather than net debt) and said the real figure was 76%. That was still pretty stunning to me.
Yeah privatising the utilities has been nothing but a scam from the start. Where exactly is all this investment they’ve been promising all these years? The bills keep going up, the government keeps paying out, and we’ve still got Victorian systems and more raw sewage being pumped into the rivers and seas destroying our ecosystems.
How long till we take a leaf out of the Welsh’s book and renationalise our water?
And Starmer still won’t back nationalisation. Despite the clear evidence that privitised utilities that are profit driven provide substandard services, charge more for their services than is necessary, and do not properly invest in infrastructure.
They do not server the countries interests, they serve their shareholders at our expense
Years of infrastructure neglect by UK Water companies has left us with raw sewage discharges into rivers across the country. Essentially the consumers payments have been diverted from there intended use to pay greedy managers, and share holders. Common theft dressed up as legitimate competitive business and protected by dubious political donations
It’s ok you can just change suppliers due to all the alternatives…
Oh…
Wait…
The utilities telling us ‘we’ll have to charge our customers to make changes that enable us to solve the problem that we haven’t invested for the last 30 years since privatisation and we’ve been profiteering’ is a bit fucking cheeky, tbh.
It just can’t work with shareholders at the helm. The only reason to buy shares is to get a return from them. It isn’t to put money into the companies but to take it out, buying shares doesn’t do that. It’s not like they have a product to have a funding round with, it’s a fixed utility.
Debt ridden cash machine is all it is.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-65626241?app=news.science_and_environment.story.65626241.page
How about no
Utilities which are critical – and it doesn’t get more critical than water. Should never be in private hands. Selling them off was a massive mistake. Just as big a mistake is not re-nationalising them.
It’s always been and continues to be a con. See ‘[The privatised water industry in the UK. An ATM for investors](https://gala.gre.ac.uk/id/eprint/21097/)’ (2018). From the abstract:
>Our econometric analysis suggests that the 40% increase in real household bills was mainly driven by continuously growing interest payments on debt … the debt levels are primarily the result of disproportionate dividend pay-outs, which exceed the privatised companies’ cash balances in all but one year since 1989.
or ‘[Privatised equity and the regulation of financialised infrastructure: the case of Macquarie in Britain’s water and energy networks](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13563467.2022.2084521)’ (2023):
>we show how private equity investors have found innovative financial mechanisms for increasing investor returns that are unrelated to productive activity. The resulting financialised, highly-indebted corporate structures create costs and risks for utilities which raise concerns for social equity … The regulatory toolbox, governed by a narrative of competition, has consistently been biased towards investors and misses much of the scope of financialised corporate extraction.
or from the [Financial Times](https://www.ft.com/content/ee03d551-8eee-4136-9eeb-7c8b51169a99) (May 2023) discussing the ‘layered corporate structures with numerous subsidiaries’ that can circumvent regulation and
>enable providers to distinguish between internal dividends – payments between intermediate holding companies in the group – and external dividends to private equity, sovereign wealth and pension funds, which own the entire water and sewage business including the holding companies.
It’s a coprorate shell game and the public continue to be the losers. We should all be angry about this.
This is infuriating. Privatization of utilities sucks.
Privatisation across the board, be it utilities, the care system, prisons, highway maintenance, trains, busses, water, power, etc etc etc…..has been nothing but a complete failure.
Profits are always the priority….they rip us off with ultra insane prices for everything and deliver a woefully terrible service in return.
All it does it line the pockets of a few and screws the country as a whole.
I immediately called bullshit at the title, that would be something like a 90% profit margin.
Reading the article turns out this figure is over a decade, not annually, which is pretty misleading. You can stick any shock figure you like in a headline if you’re going to pick arbitrary timescales.
That aside, as a local monopoly with no customer choice there is absolutely no good reason for it to be privatised. I’d full support nationalising the whole thing.
Oh no, who could possibly have predicted this obvious outcome of levying fines against these shitty monopolies?
Well yeah, the private monopolies were never going to pay, were they?
Bloody criminals how do they keep on getting away with this. Time to boycott these companies ! Don’t pay your water bill.
Government and Parliament are nothing but marketplaces for wide scale corruption at this point and it’s all at our expense, I fail to see how they’re fit for purpose : /
Thatchers model has been a disaster .greed over everything
Any public service that is essential for the general public should be nationalised. Then any profits can go back into the company.
This news was first reported as UK bill payers will need to expect water rates to go up for the cost of them doing the basic job already expected of them. Private companies who spent way to much rewarding themselves realise ooops there is public complaint. WE ONLY DUMPED SEWAGE WITHOUT A STORM 94 TIMES THIS MONTH, USUALLY IT IS 3 BUT… had to give dividends of billions to shareholders. Fuck you rivers, fuck your seas. We profit.
Eat your fish pleb, Barry Jones of CEO $$$$ in Vietnam says fuck em…. they can just eat sewage…
Might as well add in, you are an island surrounded by waters, yet 90% of seafood is imported. where are those Brexit fishing boats. The UK only likes fish that comes from nordic seas like cod
These companies are so highly leveraged due to these stock buy backs if everyone refused to pay their bill the would be bust in a few months.
Ah yes another case where it clearly states on the fucking sign who is responsible for the dumping. But no the normal people who have no say whatsoever where the sewage is dumped are left to pay.
We repeatedly vote to have our country sold off and polluted for the enrichment of the Tory ruling classes – this is what people want our country to be isn’t it otherwise why vote for it?
The only permanent way out is to nationalise and immediately re-privatise all water companies in the UK but this time shares are tied to national insurance numbers with any dividends being paid to shareholders and then taken as tax, this way UK water is nationalised but is safe from being sold by another political party as they would have to buy out 65 million shares individually.
We need to go full Bolshevik on these companies. Seize and nationalise. They have proven again and again, they can’t be trusted or held accountable.
This is working as intended, private profits, socislised costs
Hang on a minute, I thought they were facing £10bn in costs to clean up their own mess??
The thing I wonder is this must be all upper management decisions, the engineers etc must be feeling the same as we do. I wonder what internal morale and messaging is like
Its only been 30 years of getting ripped off, now people waking up to the fact that privatising utilities, and public bodies is a shit thing and ultimately negatively affect the greater populace!!
Open your rose tinted capitalism is good eyes, and smell the fucking shit!!
It fucking stinks!!!
Ah this sucks, I’m probably going to have to avoid the town centres now because of all the protesting that’s bound to be happening there over the next few weeks, you know, all those people, that will be there, to protest an injustice that directly affects them
15bn isn’t going to cover the cost of renewing the network. That money has already been trousered offshore and there’s no way we’re getting it back.
They should be fined for every single discharge. If they are not held accountable they will continue to pollute our environment whilst paying billions to their shareholders.
Utilities should not be run for profit.
I feel like they’re teetering on the edge of people starting to consider direct action.
Private equity has been fleecing our utilities for too long, wait till they get their hands on more of the health service. Our money pays for nothing but dividends for these firms. The same principle applies to the other services that have been privatised including the Post Office. These services do not invest anywhere near enough to improve our countries infrastructure, they divest.
And remember who privatised the water companies promising us a new era in services and assuring us of tough regulations. Yep, the very same Conservative Party.
Nothing to see move on they did what the government asked them and wired a fraction of this into the Tory accounts so all legal and good 👍/s
And sadly, a Labour Government won’t change this one fucking iota. I’m so goddamn depressed about UK politics right now.
They are just about starting to design new reservoirs etc. A reminder that when they were privatised the had no debt and huge land banks. Now all the land has been sold and they have huge debts to keep paying dividends.
To be honest though Dwr Cymru are government owned and not great either.
British Airways, British Aerospace, British Gas, British Oil, British Petroleum, British Telecom, British Water, Powergen, Jaguar-Landrover, Royal Mail.
Just some of OUR assets that the tories have sold for pennies on the pound, so they can cheat their way to further election victories on the basis of a ‘strong’ economy.
It’s almost like the government at the time did not realise that a private company would make money for shareholders at the expense of infrastructure when they privatised the companies.
Sorry of course they knew that but the fat piles of cash they made since has really helped their judgement 🙁
Isn’t everyone with a pension a shareholder? Why do we talk about shareholders with such disdain
At this point I have to ask where is the risk to shareholders? What could the water companies do that would see them be unable to pay a dividend and, god forbid, see shareholder value go down? It feels like shareholders are bing treated as debt holders and I don’t understand why
Nationalise and kick private interests to the curb.
We as citizens and tax payers should be rightfully angry at this complete lack of care to our countries ecosystem and our wellbeing by greedy corporations.