Shareholders in Thames Water have refused to inject a promised £750 million of cash into the company, claiming that the highly indebted utility is “uninvestible”.
The ratcheting up of the financial crisis at Britain’s largest privatised water company has raised the prospect that it may have to go through a huge debt-for-equity swap, wiping out its existing shareholders, that it could slide into a special administration regime with outside accountants taking control, or that there could be a renationalisation of the business.
The nine shareholders of Thames, which is £18 billion in debt and is the most complained-about and polluting water company in the country, are led by Omers, the Canadian pension fund. They also include the sovereign wealth funds of China and Abu Dhabi
