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...Southern said it was working with six other water utilities, including Thames, to share “best practice on new sewer mapping approaches and to design an accurate and effective sewer mapping approach”....
...“Some companies are still paying significant dividends while failing to meet their environmental targets, having unacceptable combined sewer overflow spills and being subject to ongoing legal cases,” Coucher...
...Kemble and Thames Water declined to comment. Ofwat said it “is for the company to secure shareholder backing to improve its financial resilience”....
...Meanwhile, a political and public outcry has erupted over service quality and pollution. “Thames Water is a canary in a coal mine,” said one water company investor....
...The company, which provides water and sewage services to around 15mn customers, has been struggling with the effect of higher interest rates on its £18bn debt as well as labour, energy and materials cost...
...Ministers have accepted that Thames Water bills will have to rise, as they seek to persuade investors to put more money into the troubled company and stop it sliding towards a politically disastrous nationalisation...
...When Joseph Bazalgette’s famous sewers were built in the 1860s after the “Great Stink” of 1858, the irreversible decision was taken to have combined sewers, rather than separate ones for floodwater and foul...
...Sam Dunkley is right that the mixing of clean and dirty water in Joseph Bazalgette’s sewers gives us a problem today (Letters, April 24)....
...The company — which provides water and sewerage services to roughly a quarter of the population in England — is struggling with the impact of higher inflation on chemicals, labour, energy and financing costs...
...Perhaps the most significant parallel between pre-2008 banks and pre-2024 water companies is ineffectual regulation....
...Either way, the company remains in dire straits as it grapples with an £18.3bn mountain of debt, faces fines for sewer discharges and needs to invest billions of pounds to revamp its ageing infrastructure...
...The proposal comes as the company struggles with the effect of higher inflation on labour, energy and materials costs, making it more expensive to deliver existing projects....
...Thames Water, the UK’s biggest water company, provides water and sewage services to 16mn people, or around 25 per cent of the population....
...The company, which supplies 16mn people — or about 25 per cent of the population of England and Wales — is struggling to stay afloat after its shareholders refused to put more money into the heavily leveraged...
...We supported the company as it delivered the largest investment programme in its history at around £1bn each year....
...Elliott, which manages about $65bn in assets and is known for its aggressive approach to corporate and sovereign debt restructuring, had built a position in the heavily-indebted water company’s bonds at...
...The company could be split into a “London Water” company serving the capital and a “Thames Valley” business serving the rest of its area, according to the plans that were leaked to The Guardian newspaper...
...richard.waters@ft.com...
...Shouting matches between utility companies and regulators are common in the UK....
...It has no security over water company assets. They are inside the ring-fence and the bond is not....
...Kemble’s debt now trades at 13.5 pence in the pound after the water company’s current shareholders backed away from stumping up a promised £500mn of equity and declared the company “uninvestable”, leading...
...Bank of China and Industrial and Commercial Bank of China are part of a group of lenders involved in a stand-off over debt at Thames Water’s parent company....
...On Friday, one of the holding companies that owns Thames Water said interest payments that were due this week on a £400mn bond “have not been paid”, and issued a “formal notice of default”....
...After that, there will be a viable company remaining. The assets, especially the right to levy and enforce water bills, are very valuable....
...The nearly £15bn of debt held by the Thames Water utility companies that sit below Kemble should be unaffected by the default....
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