In the letter,, external<\/a> Sir Adrian Montague said he understood customers would see large payments to senior leaders as “unjust” but argued they were necessary to stop staff leaving.<\/p>\nThe letter said: “The majority of the team were brought in recently to fix the problems the company faces and are not responsible for causing those problems.<\/p>\n
“These talented and experienced individuals have opportunities for roles outside Thames Water and, in many cases, have been actively approached by other companies. <\/p>\n
“These roles would be less in the public gaze, less difficult and more remunerative.”<\/p>\n
Sir Adrian described the payment to Buck as a “necessary incentive” and said the money had come from emergency funding provided by Thames Water’s lenders.<\/p>\n
He said the company is facing recruitment and retention difficulties and warned the problem would “persist” if it was nationalised or put into special administration. <\/p>\n
The utility company owes roughly \u00a320bn and has been working with creditors and government officials to find a way forward.<\/p>\n
Failure to reach a deal could lead to Thames Water being forced into a “special administration regime”, a form of temporary nationalisation intended to keep the business operating until a viable solution can be found.<\/p>\n
This would see government-appointed officials temporarily running the company \u2013 including funding its operations and upgrading infrastructure as well as dealing with any outstanding debts following a restructuring of the business.<\/p>\n
If the company was subsequently sold to a private buyer, the government would be able to recoup some taxpayer cash.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister Andy Burnham has previously said he would like to see “greater public control” of key water and energy utilities.<\/p>\n
In the past year, Thames Water boss Chris Weston saw his pay increase 14% to \u00a31.63m while other directors received bonuses totalling \u00a34.1m. <\/p>\n
Speaking on the BBC Big Boss interview late last month, Weston acknowledged there was anger about Thames Water pay, but argued that the company needed to be able attract “capable people to help turn this company around”. <\/p>\n
“If we’re not prepared to pay market rates, then they won’t come to us and they won’t stay with us,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thames Water paid its finance chief a \u00a31m signing-on fee in July as the company struggles with a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":733395,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-733394","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733394","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=733394"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/733394\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/733395"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=733394"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=733394"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=733394"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}