Thames Water barred from billing customers for pension shortfall
Company faces scramble for funds after Ofwat says deficit is for managers and shareholders alone to deal with
The water company, which has said it could run out of cash by next June, had asked the regulator for permission to charge customers £156.6m through bills to plug the pension shortfall.
I think the phrase is "fuck you".
Fuck you very much :)
Its almost like handing out control of something as critical and a natural monopoly as water supplies to the Saudi's is a bad idea.
FYI they also paid their Saudi overlords £37 million earlier this year.
The Aussie owners before them milked it and generated most of this debt.
"In June, the Guardian revealed that Thames’ board approved a £150m dividend ..."
So they approved a 150m dividend while knowing they had a 156m shortfall in their pension system. What the...
Welcome to capitalism. Where the only people to win are the shareholders.
That was after the £37m dividend they paid their owners.
IIRC, since privatisation the total amount of water company debt is roughly equivalent to the total amount paid out in shareholder dividends in the same timeframe
At what point can we start talking about prosecuting current and former company directors?
Well, bit of good news for you there – included in Labour's Kings Speech was a bill to make CEOs of water companies individually criminally liable in egregious cases of sewage pollution etc.
(((Nationalise))) (((Water))) (((companies)))
Not sure about the brackets mate 😬