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...Investor jitters come as Ofwat is pushing them to inject more cash into the utilities....
...They’ve already paid a high price through the company’s poor complaints record and service levels,” said Mike Keil, chief executive of the CCW....
...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....
...South East Water, which is under investigation by Ofwat for service failures, declined to comment on the letter....
...Kemble, which was set up to raise finance for Thames Water, needs the dividends to service its debt but new rules introduced last year forbid water utilities with poor financial records from making payouts...
...Already-poor service levels would deteriorate further. In the meantime, there is a risk of Thames’s toxicity starting to pollute other water companies....
...The customer-owned utility....
...If nothing else, it’d be a welcome example of a utility owner cleaning up its own mess....
...Shouting matches between utility companies and regulators are common in the UK....
...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...
...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...
...However, while some people believe privatised water utilities will function better than public services, there is no evidence that this is always the case, says Biswas....
...so-called monoline insurance market, which was almost destroyed in 2008 through its exposure to toxic bank securities, has underwritten a large portion of the bonds issued by the most indebted UK water utilities...
...That in turn would threaten to push its (already dismal) service levels below the standards required by its licence....
...Investors have demanded scope to increase bills and loosen rules over paying dividends, despite public anger over sewage discharges and the service record of the privatised utility....
...UK domestic train company Southeastern also cancelled high-speed services that run through the same tunnels on Saturday, but its trains also resumed on Sunday....
...Amazon Web Services, the tech giant’s cloud computing unit, bought the centre from US power generator Talen Energy, which developed the site adjoining a nuclear power station....
...The company, which provides water services to 15mn people in England, is now facing a messy debt restructuring or even the prospect of a temporary renationalisation under the government’s special administration...
...“We need to make sure that companies are regulated in a way that makes sure that what happens to their balance sheet doesn’t do damage to public services on which we all depend,” Hunt said....
...Berkshire noted that in January the federal government indicated it intended to sue over unpaid costs incurred by the US Forest Service for fire suppression and emergency response related to a 2020 blaze...
...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....
...Kemble needs the dividend to service its debts....
...Macquarie put in place a so-called “whole-business securitisation”, where the utility’s cash flows service different tiers of debt....
...The goods-to-services spending rotation, after enduring two years of volatility, found an equilibrium in 2023 and has stayed there since (despite a small recent blip in the chart below): Steadier goods...
...government for a significant rise in wages.The stoppages on Friday, Saturday and Monday will hit different train operating companies on different days, with passengers warned to check before they travel and no services...
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