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...Its parent company defaulted on debt earlier this month after its investors baulked at having to plough more money into the utility....
...Two directors, including company secretary Rachael Hambrook, quit parent company Kemble on Thursday in a sign of the water monopoly’s growing distress....
...Rishi Sunak has dispatched his business adviser to grapple with the crisis facing Thames Water, in a sign of jitters inside government about the potential collapse of Britain’s largest water utility....
...SE Water said: “In common with many utility companies, South East Water’s cost of financing increased year to year predominately due to the inflationary environment....
...Iberdrola will fund €36bn of the €41bn plan, the rest being provided by investors including Norway’s sovereign wealth fund and Masdar, the UAE’s renewable energy company....
...The discussions over Naturgy are under way with a holding company of La Caixa foundation, a bank-linked Spanish not-for-profit that owns 26.7 per cent of the energy group, according to a person familiar...
...In response, the Spanish government ordered a state holding company to take a stake in the “strategic” company as a counterbalance. Additional reporting by Ivan Levingston in London...
...Macquarie, the former owner of Thames Water criticised for loading the utility with debt, is a lender to its stricken parent company....
...In 2008, some companies that people thought were too big to fail failed....
...Its parent company, Kemble, has defaulted on its debt....
...Leverage is high at about 80 per cent in the utility, the debt held in the subsidiary company Thames Water Utilities Finance, within the regulatory ringfence....
...Shouting matches between utility companies and regulators are common in the UK....
...the restructuring experts, will discuss all options with creditors, which include bank lenders and bondholders, as the government tries to avoid a temporary renationalisation of the UK’s largest water utility...
...While the net debt of more than £15.6bn within Thames Water’s so-called regulatory ringfence is supposed to be firewalled from the troubles of its parent company Kemble, bonds at the utility are now trading...
...Get Thames Water right and the case for private ownership of utilities will be enhanced....
...The City veteran agreed to oversee Britain’s biggest privatised water utility last July. Since then, fears over its financial health have reached feverish levels....
...Further reading:— Seven common misconceptions about the Thames Water crisis (FTAV)— Fix your UK water utility with this one simple trick (FTAV)— Let Thames Water die to teach everyone a lesson, says Citi...
...Other water companies have high gearing too, built up in the decades since their 1989 privatisations....
...Shares of utility company Xcel Energy dropped sharply this week over potential financial exposure to the largest wildfire in Texas history....
...By 2006, when the Australian asset management firm Macquarie bought Thames Water from the Germany utility group RWE, the water company had £3.4bn in debt....
...While Thames Water’s management has long insisted that Kemble’s travails should not have an impact on the regulated utility, the water company’s bonds also traded down....
...Sir Adrian Montague has quit as chair of Thames Water’s parent company after less than a year, as the utility faces a regulatory investigation over its decision to pay shareholders a dividend....
...The nearly £15bn of debt held by the Thames Water utility companies that sit below Kemble should be unaffected by the default....
...“You end up with gold-plated utilities and high costs....
...European stocks edged higher on Monday, with gains for technology and real estate companies outweighing declines for utilities and energy companies....
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