Whitehall blueprint for Thames Water nationalisation could see state take on bulk of £15bn debt
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/apr/18/whitehall-blueprint-for-thames-water-nationalisation-could-see-state-take-on-bulk-of-15bn-debt?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other
Posted by ClassicFlavour
27 Comments
and let me guess after its all paid off they plan to sell it back to private hands for tupence as usual.
Bless ’em, the poor cockneys need more of our money.
You know they don’t have to take on any of this debt. Let them default on their debts first.
>[*Thames Water* ](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2024/apr/16/thames-water-break-up-invest-nationalised)*could be renationalised with the bulk of its £15.6bn debt added to the public purse under radical plans being considered by the government, the Guardian can reveal.*
Correct me if I’m wrong – but isn’t an option just letting them collapse and then it automatically reverts back into public hands for free??
>
*However, forcing lenders to also bear financial pain would be highly controversial, given Thames’ creditors include some of the world’s biggest asset managers, which lent to the company on that assumption that their investment carried the same gold-plated risk rating as government debt.*
So blooming what? If you lend money there’s always risk and they should have done their due diligence surely?
Ultimately this is all a bit of a joke. Nobody should be making a profit on providing water to our population. The water in this country surely belongs to ***us*** we shouldn’t have to pay a private company to use it. The ‘backbone’ of our nation should belong to us – the water, the electricity, the transport networks, law enforcement, healthcare etc.
>Shareholders in Thames, which include the funds giants USS and Omers, would see their entire investment in Thames wiped out under the renationalisation plans
Silver lining
Compulsory Purchase it for a quid and write off the debts. All of the money has just been borrowed and given to former shareholders. It hasn’t been spent on the company.
Nope. Let it collapse, let shareholders take the hit and then take over the infrastructure under a nationalised entity.
Insane to think so much money they have taken out for dividends whilst the company collapsed.
Any critical service needs to be nationalised
There needs to be something done about these massive shareholder entities that bleed business dry and siphon the cash to foreign investors. Given the state of their finances not a single penny should have been paid in dividends.
Why on earth should we be protecting their investments, it’s a risk, and they lost.
Amazing how Birmingham city council going bust is something the people have to pay off. But when a private company racks up 15bn in debt, the piggy bank government is here to save the day.
The reality is the company knew they were going to go bust, the lenders knew this. And both sides knew the government would bail them out. Shareholders walk away with billions, the lenders get their high interest loans paid and the locals get an ever declining and more expensive water service. Welcome to Tory Britain.
I wish I could say something bombastic like, “Is this the last great FU to the British taxpayer from the Tories?”
But we have another fricken’ year of them robbing and cheating and lying to go.
I’m sure the 5bn+ Rwanda plan will get over the line sooner or later. Gobble gobble ..
Water and electric should never have been privatised
This makes me so fucking furious. It was taken on with zero debts, the company loads up with debt so they can pay fat stacks to their shareholders, then the taxpayer foots the bill? No fucking way should that be allowed to happen. I actually cannot believe it
Privatised profits, nationalised losses. Classic tory
Or we let it go down take it back under public ownership for fuckall.
Investors invest at their own risk and it looks like they’ve lost their shirts on this one
No way just let it fall apart then scoop it up for nothing, shaft the shareholders for once!
There is some challenge here owing to a little joy called Trade and Investment Treaties.
Under these treaties, there are generally provisions that guarantee that if a company is nationalised, fair compensation is paid to its shareholders, and its debts are not just written off. Obviously in this case the fair compensation to shareholders is zero as the company is near worthless, but the lenders have a stronger argument (in law, not a comment on the morality of it) that the government should not simply take the assets they secured their loans against.
You may say “well, why can’t we just ignore those treaties”. Well we could – of course its almost certain that your pension fund has bonds in overseas companies, and those bonds are protected by the same Trade and Investment Treaties.
You may well say “those assets are horrifically overvalued, we should not pay book price for them, they are dilapidated and cannot be used to generate profit”. Well yes – but so are many many other assets that large amounts of money is secured against and that is a thread that the government is absolutely not going to tug before the election.
> The company could be broken up into a “London Water” company to serve the capital and a “Thames Valley” firm to look after the rest.
Ah yes brilliant plan, keep the same number of on-the-ground staff actually running and fixing things, but duplicate all the management and HR and billing and whatnot. Two smaller companies that have less in-bulk purchasing power. Barriers to co-operation and siloing knowledge off rather than sharing it. Even more bickering and blame between companies trying to pass the buck to those upstream of them.
Absolutely brain-dead idea, a product of pure management brainrot. *All* the companies should instead be a single organisation, so they can work together to sort everything out.
They need to put the current director and ceo in prison cells first and strip them of their assets to pay part of that bill
WTF
So the rest of us have to carry the debt of a privatised company that has been paying dividends to shareholders for years?
It’s a regional problem not a national one so why should everyone’s taxes have to bail these money grubbing idiots out?
If this is allowed, then there’s worse ahead.
The same company that control Thames Water also own our gas network
When you become a Tory PM you walk into Downing Street and they sit you down in front of a massive whack-a-mole machine. Except it’s not a mole, it’s a magical money tree.
It just pops up when shareholders need bailing out or mates need government contracts, but then frustratingly disappears again when it’s for something that might benefit the country. Typical.
They need to put the directors and ceo in prison cells first and strip them of their assets to pay part of that bill
They will buy it to take off the debt and the share holders will profit. We will loose billions then they will sell it again at a loss to some Arabs or Chinese consortium like they did with the Banks. Were just cogs to keep the rich rich in this festering corrupt system of shit. How about we hold them accountable. Make all the profiteers pay and then take it back? Why should we have to loose out as always.
Let it die, buy the assets, and then write up a charter for a cooperative. The charter would be the founding document, like a constitution, protecting the company’s cooperative status and containing a clause that allows the government to ‘step in’ if something catastrophic is going on with the company. After that, seek out the first few employees and then release the newly-formed water co-op into the wilds. It’d be a private-ish company, owned by its workers and its customers alike, with the government involved only as far as an emergency backup.
Time to renationalise without compensation, investments can go down as well as up, capital is at risk!!
If we bail one out we bail them all out.
I’m fairly sure we shouldn’t bail them out given the absolute shit show that is Thames water
This is litterally the only time I’ve agreed with Jacob Rees Mogg.
Let the company fold. Let it fail. Then it reverts to the government for free.
Let CAPATALISM do it’s thing.
Any MP who claims to be a CAPATALIST and disagrees with letting them go bust.. Is full of shit.