{"id":465738,"date":"2026-03-09T10:24:10","date_gmt":"2026-03-09T10:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/465738\/"},"modified":"2026-03-09T10:24:10","modified_gmt":"2026-03-09T10:24:10","slug":"yorkshire-water-receives-fresh-funding-despite-sewage-fines-and-pay-row-water-industry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/465738\/","title":{"rendered":"Yorkshire Water receives fresh funding despite sewage fines and pay row | Water industry"},"content":{"rendered":"

A leading European investor will pump fresh funding into Yorkshire<\/a> Water including helping to cover a \u00a3600m loan, despite recent heavy sewage fines and a scandal over executive pay at the utility firm.<\/p>\n

EQT, a Swedish private equity group, said on Monday it would take a 42% stake in Kelda Holdings, the Jersey-registered parent company of Yorkshire Water, which has 5.7 million customers across Yorkshire and parts of the East Midlands and Lincolnshire.<\/p>\n

The move will effectively make it Yorkshire Water\u2019s joint owner, bringing the stake of an existing shareholder, GIC, an investment firm, to 42%, and TCorp, the investment vehicle of Australia\u2019s New South Wales public sector, to 16%.<\/p>\n

EQT said part of the deal would involve contributing to a \u00a3600m \u201cinter-company loan repayment\u201d that is due before March 2027, while it was \u201cfully supportive\u201d of spending plans to clean up Yorkshire\u2019s record on sewage spills.<\/p>\n

The buyout group is already invested in four British plants that burn household and commercial rubbish to generate electricity, via a stake in the energy-from-waste company Encyclis, and water treatment operations spanning the US, Caribbean and Latin America, according to its website<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The deal comes as Yorkshire Water faces mounting scrutiny over its environmental record and executive pay. It was handed a \u00a3700,000 fine last month<\/a> for releasing sewage repeatedly into a stream.<\/p>\n

A succession of sewage pollution incidents in Pools Brook country park near Chesterfield from 2018 killed fish and insects and polluted the stream for more than half a mile, the Environment Agency found in February.<\/p>\n

Last year, the Guardian revealed that Nicola Shaw, its chief executive, had received \u00a31.3m in previously undisclosed extra pay<\/a> since 2023 via the offshore parent company. Shaw was handed \u00a3660,000 from Kelda in the 2023-24 and the 2024-25 financial years, and the size of the fees were not disclosed in Yorkshire\u2019s annual report.<\/p>\n

That led to a government decision to close loopholes<\/a> that allow water company bosses to continue receiving large bonuses despite a ban passed last year.<\/p>\n

Bosses of companies that illegally dumped sewage into England\u2019s rivers and seas, including Yorkshire\u2019s Shaw, had been paid millions in bonuses despite the ban. MPs have said the loopholes allowed companies to get around the bonus ban by labelling payments differently or paying bosses through linked companies.<\/p>\n

On Monday, Shaw described the new investment as \u201ca great step forward\u201d. She added: \u201cThe EQT team will bring additional expertise to our board, and their backing is a strong vote of confidence in our plan to improve performance and the progress we have made so far.<\/p>\n

\u201cEQT has a long-term perspective and their team is committed to supporting the delivery of our \u00a38.3bn investment programme.\u201d<\/p>\n

Funds controlled by DWS, the asset manager majority owned by Deutsche Bank, and Corsair, a US private equity group, previously held a combined 54% of the company, while GIC and TCorp\u2019s holdings have risen from 34% and 13%, respectively.<\/p>\n

Kunal Koya, a partner at EQT Infrastructure, said the company was \u201ca responsible private capital manager\u201d and it could help in \u201cmodernising\u201d the water sector.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A leading European investor will pump fresh funding into Yorkshire Water including helping to cover a \u00a3600m loan,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465739,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-465738","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-gb","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465738\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465739"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}