Thames Water is, in effect, controlled by a majority of its lenders who are owed nearly \u00a318bn.<\/p>\n
They are offering to write off over a quarter of that debt and inject now money in return for some leniency over future fines for missing pollution and leak targets in the future.<\/p>\n
Hunter says that would be a bad outcome for Thames customers.<\/p>\n
“They would appear to be negotiating and demanding a whole raft of regulatory concessions, which which cast doubt on the integrity of the regulation, and ultimately will be to a cost to the consumer. I think that is a very, very bad solution.”<\/p>\n
The consortium of lenders, now known as London and Valley Water, has the backing of the Thames Water board.<\/p>\n
The lenders told the BBC that CKI had its chance to make a good offer for Thames during a bidding process run by the investment bank Rothschilds but failed to present a competitive bid.<\/p>\n
“London & Valley Water has submitted to Ofwat a further improved proposal for the turnaround and recapitalisation of Thames Water. Experienced investors would provide up to \u00a310 billion of new private capital to stabilise and transform Thames Water”<\/p>\n
The government has consistently said it would prefer “a market-based solution” and said it could not comment on ongoing negotiations.<\/p>\n
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said: “The government will always act in the national interest on these issues.<\/p>\n
“The company remains financially stable, but we stand ready for all eventualities, including applying for a special administration regime if that were to become necessary.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thames Water is, in effect, controlled by a majority of its lenders who are owed nearly \u00a318bn. They…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":532070,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-532069","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\/532069","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=532069"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/532069\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/532070"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=532069"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=532069"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=532069"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}