Investors tell Thames Water to ‘eat humble pie’ over failed takeover and open bids
Thames Water’s bosses should eat “humble pie” over a failed takeover process last year and let other firms bid for it, according to a Hong Kong investment group angling to buy the troubled water company.CK Infrastructure (CKI), which is owned by Hong Kong’s richest man, Li Ka-shing, has already acquired Northumbrian Water and has been trying to launch a bid for Thames since February last year.Andrew Hunter, CKI’s co-managing director, told the Guardian he was “frustrated” at being shut out of the process to save the debt-laden water company, which has now been locked in talks with its own lenders since last summer.“My goodness, it’s been going on forever,” he said.Thames has been trying to stave off financial collapse for more than two years as it struggles under the weight of £17.
6bn in debt, built up over decades since privatisation.Bosses tried to sell it last year but faced embarrassment when their preferred bidder, KKR, pulled out of the deal at the last minute.Now it is negotiating with creditors over a separate £10bn rescue plan that would involve paying off the hundreds of millions of pounds-worth of fines for leaks and pollution, in exchange for the company not falling into a government-handled administration, in effect a temporary nationalisation.CKI has previously expressed interest in buying the company and wrote to the water regulator, Ofwat, in October to insist that it would bid for Thames if there was a competitive sale process.Asked if the watchdog should intervene to open up the bidding, Hunter said: “I most definitely think they should.
”“It’s hugely important that Thames Water is owned and operated by an experienced, knowledgeable company,” he added.“I would be encouraging government and Ofwat to have a process that brings about that result.“The direction of travel at the moment is bringing about a very unfortunate result, in my view,” Hunter said, casting doubt on Thames’ lenders – which include the US hedge funds Elliott Management and Silver Point Capital – as suitable long-term owners of the company.“They’re a mixed bag of traditional creditors and US distressed debt hedge funds,” he said.“They are good at what they do but they don’t run UK water companies.
”CKI has owned Northumbrian Water since 2011 and has staked much of its claim to buying Thames on its experience running that company, which serves 2.7 million customers in north-east England compared with Thames’s 16 million in and around London.It also has a long track record in UK energy as owner of UK Power Networks and Northern Gas Networks, but some MPs have raised concerns about links to China, with former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith previously saying on social media that a CKI acquisition “should be avoided at all costs”.“I take a little bit of issue with the characterisation [of CKI] as Chinese,” Hunter said.“CKI was founded in Hong Kong, under British rule, I hasten to add, and and it is now listed in Hong Kong and listed in London.
”“I can’t control the headlines,” he added.“We are well respected in this country and we’re a very large inward foreign investor.”CKI had previously been eliminated from the process despite tabling a multibillion-pound proposal, as Thames chose KKR as a preferred bidder and entered exclusive talks with the company before it eventually pulled out.Hunter said other prospective buyers should be given access to the due diligence information given to KKR at the time.“My frustration stems from the fact that we’ve never been given the information and allowed to make an offer,” he said.
He added that it “doesn’t reflect well” on Thames’ bosses that the investment company still walked away,“When you grant exclusivity to someone and they walk away, there’s a little bit of humble pie to be eaten,They’ve got to swallow their pride and say: ‘Look fellas, we need to start again,’”However, Hunter said that while CKI had spoken to Ofwat over the matter, he had not spoken personally with Emma Reynolds, the environment secretary, who would also need to approve any potential rescue deal,A spokesperson for Thames’s creditors declined to comment.
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