Ann Rosenberg is right that there are serious questions to be asked about the identity of the shareholders - or rather the ultimate equity holders - of the entity which trades as Thames Water Utilities Ltd. The second link (http://bit.ly/TWdebt) in her paragraph about Macquarie is to a report of December 2007 to the Treasury Select Committee by finance specialist Martin Blaiklock, and it is chilling: in June 2007 a "special dividend" of £535 million was paid by Thames Water to its shareholders, but its profit in that year was just £190 million, in line with other water companies. In other words just a few years before starting the Thames Tunnel project Thames Water was being "milked" of not just its trading profit, but of its balance sheet reserves.
I maintain that from an engineering and public health point of view we must build the Thames Tunnel, but we must make sure that it is owned by Thames Water customers - who will be paying for it - and not by unidentified Private Equity providers, who are currently pulling the financial strings.
We need a Government with some backbone to lay down proper financial safeguards for OUR Thames Tunnel. |