>Water companies are awaiting a decision from the regulator, Ofwat, on how far they can raise customer bills by hundreds of pounds to pay for upgrades, as well as servicing debts.
Maybe they shouldn’t have spent decades siphoning off all the value from the company to pay dividends to shareholders. Buy a company, pillage the assets, plunge it into debt then demand help from the government and the unwilling customers.
Allowing public utilities to be owned privately, and answerable to shareholders rather than the people of the country, should be one of the biggest scandals in political history. Safe, clean water should not be a commodity to make profit on.
PerceptionGreat2439 on
Greed is good
Shareholder value
Privatise the profit
Socialise the loss
Bastard’s!
LetterheadOdd5700 on
How long before the state is forced to step in? I don’t see any other private operator stepping in willingly.
luxinseptentrionis on
Southern Water is controlled by Macquarie, the business entity that was the leading part of the consortium (it had a nearly 48% stake) that purchased Thames Water in 2007 for £5.1 billion. The consortium had borrowed £2.8 billion for the purchase; the business was refinanced and £2 billion paid back to the investors, the debt moving to Thames Water’s balance sheet. Shareholders were also paid a £535 million dividend in 2007, despite Thames Water’s profits for the year being just £190m. In the ten years the Macquarie consortium had control of Thames Water, more than £2.5 billion was paid out as shareholder dividends. Over the same period Thames Water’s debts increased from £3.2 billion to £10.7 billion. The return to Macquarie on their ten year investment on the other hand was reported to be between 15.5% and 19% annually.
([Source](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13563467.2022.2084521): ‘Private equity and the regulation of financialised unfrastructure: the case of Macquarie in Britain’s water and energy networks’, *New Political Economy* 28:2 (2023), pp. 155–172.)
We all know what a state Thames Water was left in. Ofwat reportedly ‘welcomed’ Macquarie’s purchase of Southern in 2021. It looks as if history is repeating itself and will continue to do so if left unchecked. It’s impossible to look at this without feeling revulsion at corporate greed, and anger at the political and regulatory failure that continues to surround the privatisation of water.
Demostravius4 on
ITT: Fuck other peoples pensions that were invested badly, not by the earner. Mines fine at the moment so it’s okay.
5 Comments
>Water companies are awaiting a decision from the regulator, Ofwat, on how far they can raise customer bills by hundreds of pounds to pay for upgrades, as well as servicing debts.
Maybe they shouldn’t have spent decades siphoning off all the value from the company to pay dividends to shareholders. Buy a company, pillage the assets, plunge it into debt then demand help from the government and the unwilling customers.
Allowing public utilities to be owned privately, and answerable to shareholders rather than the people of the country, should be one of the biggest scandals in political history. Safe, clean water should not be a commodity to make profit on.
Greed is good
Shareholder value
Privatise the profit
Socialise the loss
Bastard’s!
How long before the state is forced to step in? I don’t see any other private operator stepping in willingly.
Southern Water is controlled by Macquarie, the business entity that was the leading part of the consortium (it had a nearly 48% stake) that purchased Thames Water in 2007 for £5.1 billion. The consortium had borrowed £2.8 billion for the purchase; the business was refinanced and £2 billion paid back to the investors, the debt moving to Thames Water’s balance sheet. Shareholders were also paid a £535 million dividend in 2007, despite Thames Water’s profits for the year being just £190m. In the ten years the Macquarie consortium had control of Thames Water, more than £2.5 billion was paid out as shareholder dividends. Over the same period Thames Water’s debts increased from £3.2 billion to £10.7 billion. The return to Macquarie on their ten year investment on the other hand was reported to be between 15.5% and 19% annually.
([Source](https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13563467.2022.2084521): ‘Private equity and the regulation of financialised unfrastructure: the case of Macquarie in Britain’s water and energy networks’, *New Political Economy* 28:2 (2023), pp. 155–172.)
We all know what a state Thames Water was left in. Ofwat reportedly ‘welcomed’ Macquarie’s purchase of Southern in 2021. It looks as if history is repeating itself and will continue to do so if left unchecked. It’s impossible to look at this without feeling revulsion at corporate greed, and anger at the political and regulatory failure that continues to surround the privatisation of water.
ITT: Fuck other peoples pensions that were invested badly, not by the earner. Mines fine at the moment so it’s okay.