In a little over three decades, Thames Water, the biggest water and sewerage company in England, serving 15 million people, has transformed from a debt-free public utility into what critics argue is a privately owned investment vehicle carrying the highest debt in the industry.
Over those years – as admitted by Sarah Bentley, the firm’s departing CEO – its executives and the shareholders and private equity companies who own it have presided over decades of underinvestment, aggressive cost-cutting and huge dividend payments.
Shareholder dividends paid 2009-2019
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2020/jul/01/england-privatised-water-firms-dividends-shareholders
In related news
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2023/jun/30/in-charts-how-privatisation-drained-thames-waters-coffers
I worked for ten years at Thames Water as an electrician and can absolutely confirm this to be true.
It’s shareholders first, everything else if there’s enough time and money.
The water boards in this country are natural monopolies and should never have been privatised in the first place.