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Someone below the line on an editorial about this scandal has posted this. It's quite long but well worth reading, particularly given who it was who was commenting:5 years ago, on 1 March 2018, Gove made a speech to the industry. He started with a few pats of the back for privatisation, but then proceeded to deliver a massively critical broadside that showed that somein govt understood then how some of these companies were rooking the public. "And water companies have been able to minimise their tax obligations, even as many have failed to minimise leaks and pollution, because some of their best brains appear to as be intent on financial engineering just as much as real engineering ... Four water companies – Thames, Southern, Anglian and Yorkshire – make particularly keen use of sophisticated financial engineering. They have set up multi-layered corporate structures of dizzying complexity involving multiple subsidiaries, some based offshore. The use of these offshore entities makes company affairs more opaque and their financial activities less transparent ... Southern and Yorkshire – have also set up offshore financial structures in the Cayman Islands." There's much more: "some in the sector have further leveraged the equity by borrowing again at parent company level, thereby diluting the true ‘equity’ even more. So, the Thames buffer zone is down to just 17% and it has the highest gearing in the sector." Govt knew the problem. It knew that regulation had failed. And it has done blow all about it.

Richard Carter ● 718d