Die Kreditwürdigkeit von Thames Water wurde auf den niedrigsten Stand von Ramschniveau herabgestuft, da das Risiko besteht, dass dem Unternehmen das Geld ausgeht, während es versucht, eine Renationalisierung zu vermeiden

Excerpts from article by Robert Smith and Gill Plimmer:

*Two major credit agencies have slashed Thames Water’s debt rating into the lowest reaches of junk, piling pressure on the UK’s largest water utility as it runs through cash faster than expected and seeks to avoid a renationalisation.*

*Both S&P and Moody’s cut the rating on Thames Water’s £16bn of top-ranking debt by five notches to the equivalent of CCC+, putting it into so-called triple-C territory that is considered highly risky and prone to default. Thames Water lost its investment-grade credit rating in July.*

*[…] The Financial Times reported on Tuesday that Thames Water was burning cash at a faster rate than it earlier expected, pushing it to try to access back-up liquidity facilities and piling pressure on the company to roll £500mn of debt due in days.*

*Thames Water last week announced it would run out of cash shortly after Christmas if it was not able to get permission from banks to access liquidity reserves and roll certain credit facilities, which would then mean it would have to call a default on its debt to access £550mn of reserve liquidity facilities to have enough cash until May 2025.*

*S&P said this announcement was “contrary” to previous expectations and that owing to “deficiencies in the liquidity risk management” it now assessed Thames Water’s “management and governance as negative”.*

Welcome to the weird world of public utility financing, where your credit rating can tank but your share price trundles along because you know the government will have to buy you out in the end.

It needs to fail and be renationalised. Much as I am delighted we have a new Government, I’ll be absolutely pissed if they prop up Anglian Water as it is, rather than taking control of it.

Privatising something as basic and essential as water, was always one the stupidest decisions ever made.

They’re the only company I can think of where I’ve always thought they should be charging more. I’m currently paying £15 a month, for my 3 bed house (I’m the only person in it, but still, nothing I have is water efficient! I shower every day, use a dishwasher etc) which is quite a rise from around a year ago when I was paying £13. This just seems ridiculously low.

I hope some investigations will be done into the veracity of the declarations of solvency the directors of the company would have had to make before declaring dividends in previous years. These sound like long-term issues and should have been known for a while.