[News] Ofwat to basically deregulate water companies….

[happypig]

Let all of them go bust so the shares are worthless then take back under public ownership. If they're not going to go bust, impose rigid (onerous even) requirements on them to sort out thier infrastructure.

It's time the large institutional shareholders found out that share prices can go down as well as up.

 

[chickens]

Let all of them go bust so the shares are worthless then take back under public ownership. If they're not going to go bust, impose rigid (onerous even) requirements on them to sort out thier infrastructure.

It's time the large institutional shareholders found out that share prices can go down as well as up.

At the very least the law should insist that dividends to shareholders and management bonuses are not payable (or deferrable) while water companies are shipping sewage into our oceans and rivers.

First they do their job, then if they prove competent at doing their job they can have a reward.

 

[Martlet]

Let all of them go bust so the shares are worthless then take back under public ownership. If they're not going to go bust, impose rigid (onerous even) requirements on them to sort out thier infrastructure.

It's time the large institutional shareholders found out that share prices can go down as well as up.

Those institutions are mainly yours and my pension funds.

For example, the biggest write offs in Thames Water (equity valued at £0 now) have been in the books of USS (university employee pension schemes), Omers (Ontario municipal workers pensions) and BT Hermes (BT pensioners).

These aren’t anonymous institutional shareholders with share prices.

So yes - let them all go bust so that all of us have less funds for our retirements. Good plan.

 

[Mustafa II]

At the very least the law should insist that dividends to shareholders and management bonuses are not payable (or deferrable) while water companies are shipping sewage into our oceans and rivers.

First they do their job, then if they prove competent at doing their job they can have a reward.

Southern Water shareholders have not received any dividends since 2017

 

[Weststander]

Those institutions are mainly yours and my pension funds.

For example, the biggest write offs in Thames Water (equity valued at £0 now) have been in the books of USS (university employee pension schemes), Omers (Ontario municipal workers pensions) and BT Hermes (BT pensioners).

These aren’t anonymous institutional shareholders with share prices.

So yes - let them all go bust so that all of us have less funds for our retirements. Good plan.

With the exception of ownership situations such as the Australian shysters who owned Thames Water for a period, who got Thames Water to max out its borrowings to pay themselves vast dividends, and then sold.

 

[Weststander]

View attachment 186571

That's out of date.

 

[Nobby Cybergoat]

The question I want to ask OFWAT and Southern Water, when they get round to hiking my bill by 40% or whatever it is to fix our broken systems ... is .... OK, if I give you all this extra money, what is to stop you frittering it on executive bonuses and huge shareholder payouts like you did last time?

 

[chickens]

Southern Water shareholders have not received any dividends since 2017

Neither have Thames Water external shareholders, yet if you look at the article I posted on Thames Water, there dividends have been taken by parts of the company to pay other parts of the company.

I haven’t looked into Southern Water’s corporate structure, but if it turns out to use the same tricks, then you’ll find it’s not just the pipes network that’s leaky.

 

[severnside gull]

Those institutions are mainly yours and my pension funds.

For example, the biggest write offs in Thames Water (equity valued at £0 now) have been in the books of USS (university employee pension schemes), Omers (Ontario municipal workers pensions) and BT Hermes (BT pensioners).

These aren’t anonymous institutional shareholders with share prices.

So yes - let them all go bust so that all of us have less funds for our retirements. Good plan.

Makes you wonder about the green credentials of our pension fund managers……….and their financial acuity. Anyone with half a brain would have read the signs and moved their funds elsewhere by now.

 

[Simster]

The question I want to ask OFWAT and Southern Water, when they get round to hiking my bill by 40% or whatever it is to fix our broken systems ... is .... OK, if I give you all this extra money, what is to stop you frittering it on executive bonuses and huge shareholder payouts like you did last time?

And they'll answer "nothing" and you'll have to suck it up as you have no choice where to get your water.

The fact that the only way to ensure water companies get what they richly deserve will have the affect of tanking pension funds of innocent people means they get away with it scott-free, and ultimately lays bare the reason as to why - despite inefficiencies of public ownership - vital services like utilities should NEVER be in private ownership unless competition can improve the lives of the consumer.

Of all the privatisations undertaken by the Tories in the past 40 years, only the privatisation of BT has any merit IMO.

 

[SkirlieWirlie]

Those institutions are mainly yours and my pension funds.

For example, the biggest write offs in Thames Water (equity valued at £0 now) have been in the books of USS (university employee pension schemes), Omers (Ontario municipal workers pensions) and BT Hermes (BT pensioners).

These aren’t anonymous institutional shareholders with share prices.

So yes - let them all go bust so that all of us have less funds for our retirements. Good plan.

Maybe our pension providers should be reinvesting in businesses that are profitable based on real, sustainable performance...

 

[Harry Wilson's tackle]

And they'll answer "nothing" and you'll have to suck it up as you have no choice where to get your water.

The fact that the only way to ensure water companies get what they richly deserve will have the affect of tanking pension funds of innocent people means they get away with it scott-free, and ultimately lays bare the reason as to why - despite inefficiencies of public ownership - vital services like utilities should NEVER be in private ownership unless competition can improve the lives of the consumer.

Of all the privatisations undertaken by the Tories in the past 40 years, only the privatisation of BT has any merit IMO.

Yep. Perfect example of how capitalist systems quickly become immutable, meaning that any safeguards considered necessary have to be built in at inception, or it will be impossible later.

Privatization was done at breakneck speed with the imperative being 'let the market decide'....with the (very fashionable at the time) rubric of minimum regulation.

The moral of the story is that entrepreneurship will maximize the return to the entrepreneur while minimizing risk.....to the entrepreneur.

I don't blame capitalism or entrepreneurs for this. If you could, you would, would you not?

But HMG must always work in the interests of the 'people' (individuals) and not allow systems to form that leave the public footing the bills.

(when you add in the various unregulated wheezes permitted by Johnson during Covid, it becomes clear we have just lived through the arse end of unrestricted capitalism, with the public now having to foot the bill. For things to change we will feel lots of pain - in pensions, benefits and salaries, with public services stuck in a mire.)

 

[BrightonCottager]

Neither have Thames Water external shareholders, yet if you look at the article I posted on Thames Water, there dividends have been taken by parts of the company to pay other parts of the company.

I haven’t looked into Southern Water’s corporate structure, but if it turns out to use the same tricks, then you’ll find it’s not just the pipes network that’s leaky.

Southerns majority shareholder is Macquarie - the same lot who owned Thames Water. Ofwat said it was imposing strictercontrols on them before allowing the takeover of Southern. However, it does have a byzantine ownership structure and will be imposing the highest water bills of all the privatised companies to pay (allegedly) for the infrastructure needed to clean up our rivers and sea. The infrastructure we've already paid for should've been upgraded to cope with extra people and climate change but it wasn't even maintained properly.

For example, they want to spend £135m in the area served by the Peacehaven treatment plant (most of B&H, the deans, Telscombe and Peacehaven). The reason is that the Marine Drive Pumping Station (opened 2013) needs mending / upgrading and they're trying to separate out rainwater and wastewater.

If you're angry about this, there's a march on Parliament on 26th October.

Feargal Sharkey leads a call for clean water and invites outraged public to join him on October 26th. Stephen Fry narrates film to get “Britain’s waters off life support” - River Action UK

A coalition of the concerned are calling on everyone in the country angry at the state of water to join us to demand that our new government takes urgent action to address the UK’s alarming and dangerous water pollution crisis by marching through Central London on Saturday 26th October.

riveractionuk.com

 

[chickens]

Southerns majority shareholder is Macquarie - the same lot who owned Thames Water. Ofwat said it was imposing strictercontrols on them before allowing the takeover of Southern. However, it does have a byzantine ownership structure and will be imposing the highest water bills of all the privatised companies to pay (allegedly) for the infrastructure needed to clean up our rivers and sea. The infrastructure we've already paid for should've been upgraded to cope with extra people and climate change but it wasn't even maintained properly.

For example, they want to spend £135m in the area served by the Peacehaven treatment plant (most of B&H, the deans, Telscombe and Peacehaven). The reason is that the Marine Drive Pumping Station (opened 2013) needs mending / upgrading and they're trying to separate out rainwater and wastewater.

If you're angry about this, there's a march on Parliament on 26th October.

Feargal Sharkey leads a call for clean water and invites outraged public to join him on October 26th. Stephen Fry narrates film to get “Britain’s waters off life support” - River Action UK

A coalition of the concerned are calling on everyone in the country angry at the state of water to join us to demand that our new government takes urgent action to address the UK’s alarming and dangerous water pollution crisis by marching through Central London on Saturday 26th October.

riveractionuk.com

Thank you. I will do my utmost to be present for this. I’m not ever sure it’s the most effective way of getting a point across, but unless we send a message that this won’t fly here, it will be repeated across every privatised industry ad infinitum.

 

[chickens]

Those institutions are mainly yours and my pension funds.

For example, the biggest write offs in Thames Water (equity valued at £0 now) have been in the books of USS (university employee pension schemes), Omers (Ontario municipal workers pensions) and BT Hermes (BT pensioners).

These aren’t anonymous institutional shareholders with share prices.

So yes - let them all go bust so that all of us have less funds for our retirements. Good plan.

So, you’re arguing that shares that pension funds invest in should always be bailed out? A kind of heads I win, tails you lose scenario.

Look to your pension fund if it’s picked a loser, if the markets won’t bail it out, what the hell makes you think the taxpayer should?

If the government makes any move to rescue Thames Water without insisting on a majority of equity I will be furious.

The market won’t touch it, so let’s see what transpires. You should be asking questions of your pension provider, not screaming for taxpayer money to save you.

 

[BrightonCottager]

A lot of the things announced in the Government's review of the water industry were things that Surfers Against Sewage were calling for, so pressure in the form of well publicised actions like paddle outs & demos do work along with research to back it up.

 

[Martlet]

So, you’re arguing that shares that pension funds invest in should always be bailed out? A kind of heads I win, tails you lose scenario.

Look to your pension fund if it’s picked a loser, if the markets won’t bail it out, what the hell makes you think the taxpayer should?

If the government makes any move to rescue Thames Water without insisting on a majority of equity I will be furious.

The market won’t touch it, so let’s see what transpires. You should be asking questions of your pension provider, not screaming for taxpayer money to save you.

It was the comment around letting them all go bust that I was referring to. That would result in major pension fund write-offs and probably make the whole UK’s infrastructure market uninvestable.

There is no doubt that Thames’s equity is now worthless - there will need to be a restructuring of its debt to sort that out.

But if the regulator picked up the suggestion, it could choose to deny the whole sector the returns that it needs to attract capital, and make the investments needed to sort the industry out - which would result in complete market failure.

Not very sensible when the government is going to be reliant on the private sector to make the investments it needs to drive growth.

 

[chickens]

It was the comment around letting them all go bust that I was referring to. That would result in major pension fund write-offs and probably make the whole UK’s infrastructure market uninvestable.

There is no doubt that Thames’s equity is now worthless - there will need to be a restructuring of its debt to sort that out.

But if the regulator picked up the suggestion, it could choose to deny the whole sector the returns that it needs to attract capital, and make the investments needed to sort the industry out - which would result in complete market failure.

Not very sensible when the government is going to be reliant on the private sector to make the investments it needs to drive growth.

Well, if they go bust private enterprise will (as always) hand it back to the taxpayer to sort out the mess. Given this, I’d rather we ran the service too.

What private enterprise has done with our national utilities is load them up with debt, and carry out the absolute minimum maintenance they could possibly get away with.

Now they want colossal bill increases because the money they should have been spending on maintaining and upgrading infrastructure has already gone to shareholders and directors, and they haven’t maintained or upgraded infrastructure.

I also wonder why pension funds are investing in opaque corporate structures and sleight of hand financing arrangements? I thought they had duty of care to vet their investments?

I am not anti-capitalist at all, but this form of capitalism, which is basically a form of (deliberately induced) disaster capitalism, I abhor. Let’s not just bail them out so they can do it all again.

 

[CheeseRolls]

Those institutions are mainly yours and my pension funds.

For example, the biggest write offs in Thames Water (equity valued at £0 now) have been in the books of USS (university employee pension schemes), Omers (Ontario municipal workers pensions) and BT Hermes (BT pensioners).

These aren’t anonymous institutional shareholders with share prices.

So yes - let them all go bust so that all of us have less funds for our retirements. Good plan.

One of my significant pension funds went out to consultation recently and I told them I was unhappy with the exposure to Southern Water. If you are genuinely concerned about your pension investments, what are you doing about it?

 

[Eeyore]

Those institutions are mainly yours and my pension funds.

For example, the biggest write offs in Thames Water (equity valued at £0 now) have been in the books of USS (university employee pension schemes), Omers (Ontario municipal workers pensions) and BT Hermes (BT pensioners).

These aren’t anonymous institutional shareholders with share prices.

So yes - let them all go bust so that all of us have less funds for our retirements. Good plan.

Correct. I personally have a policy of not investing in former essential utilities or oil, but I am clueless as to where my pension is invested. There are ramifications for ordinary folk if a major company goes down.

That said, I agree that dividend payments are a no no.