sh.t in Rivers

Discussions about serious topics, for serious people
IvanV
Stummy Beige
Posts: 2663
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 11:12 am

Re: sh.t in Rivers

Post by IvanV » Thu Jun 08, 2023 11:30 am

bjn wrote:
Thu Jun 08, 2023 10:42 am
Given the backers of privatisation fund the Tories, you could definitely argue that it was rent seeking to privatise the water companies in the first place.
The impulse to privatise the water companies was very much the PSBR and the large increase in water charges. The government couldn't provide them with the capital they needed, and didn't want to take the blame for the large water price increases needed to pay for the large capital investments. So privatisation was a good solution for that. And the water companies were fat enough with inefficiencies that some cost savings could set off the price increases. Though some water companies, especially some of the former statutory water companies, needing massive improvement works, did have huge price increases.

But doubtless the bankers and financiers of the City were keen to encourage Mrs Thatcher in her "popular capitalism" approach. A lot of commentators at the time thought that it would have been much cheaper and more effective to privatise them through trade sales to existing companies, as had happened for a number of other privatisations such as the shipbuilding and defence assets. But that would have made a lot less money for the City money-grubbers.

We can locate various other present Tory policies that give advantage to various money-grubbers who do little for the real economy, but help fund the Tory party. Doubtless utterly coincidental.

User avatar
dyqik
Princess POW
Posts: 7527
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2019 4:19 pm
Location: Masshole
Contact:

Re: sh.t in Rivers

Post by dyqik » Thu Jun 08, 2023 12:07 pm

IvanV wrote:
Thu Jun 08, 2023 11:30 am
bjn wrote:
Thu Jun 08, 2023 10:42 am
Given the backers of privatisation fund the Tories, you could definitely argue that it was rent seeking to privatise the water companies in the first place.
The impulse to privatise the water companies was very much the PSBR and the large increase in water charges. The government couldn't didn't want to provide them with the capital they needed, and didn't want to take the blame for the large water price increases needed to pay for the large capital investments.
FTFY. The government could have borrowed what was needed.

User avatar
dyqik
Princess POW
Posts: 7527
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2019 4:19 pm
Location: Masshole
Contact:

Re: sh.t in Rivers

Post by dyqik » Thu Jun 08, 2023 12:09 pm

bjn wrote:
Thu Jun 08, 2023 10:42 am
IvanV wrote:
Thu Jun 08, 2023 10:23 am
jimbob wrote:
Thu Jun 08, 2023 10:03 am

Yup, and one thing that would discourage that would be for personal liability for those taking the decisions. With the highest person who should know about it, so CEO unless lower management had hidden the legal liability from them.
Semantic point, but that's not quite what I understand by rent seeking. To me, rent seeking is activity in pursuit of, lobbying for, etc, a situation you can take advantage of.
Hmm, I've possibly learned a new thing, that rent seeking has a narrower definition than I thought. Looking at the wiki...
Rent-seeking is the act of growing one's existing wealth by manipulating the social or political environment without creating new wealth
Further down is says...
Rent-seeking implies extraction of uncompensated value from others without making any contribution to productivity.
Which is in line with the broader definition I had in mind and probably has another name.

Given the backers of privatisation fund the Tories, you could definitely argue that it was rent seeking to privatise the water companies in the first place.
Likewise, using existing copyright legislation to switch from a license sale to subscription model for selling software or TV content, is not manipulating the legal environment, but it is definitely rent seeking - it's changing from selling to renting.

FlammableFlower
Dorkwood
Posts: 1508
Joined: Mon Nov 11, 2019 1:22 pm

Re: sh.t in Rivers

Post by FlammableFlower » Thu Jun 08, 2023 12:24 pm

Oh look, government have been sh.t: https://www.theguardian.com/environment ... -overflows

User avatar
bjn
Stummy Beige
Posts: 2916
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2019 4:58 pm
Location: London

Re: sh.t in Rivers

Post by bjn » Thu Jun 08, 2023 12:34 pm

dyqik wrote:
Thu Jun 08, 2023 12:07 pm
IvanV wrote:
Thu Jun 08, 2023 11:30 am
bjn wrote:
Thu Jun 08, 2023 10:42 am
Given the backers of privatisation fund the Tories, you could definitely argue that it was rent seeking to privatise the water companies in the first place.
The impulse to privatise the water companies was very much the PSBR and the large increase in water charges. The government couldn't didn't want to provide them with the capital they needed, and didn't want to take the blame for the large water price increases needed to pay for the large capital investments.
FTFY. The government could have borrowed what was needed.
At a much lower rate than any private company could.

User avatar
bjn
Stummy Beige
Posts: 2916
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2019 4:58 pm
Location: London

Re: sh.t in Rivers

Post by bjn » Thu Jun 08, 2023 12:36 pm

IvanV wrote:
Thu Jun 08, 2023 11:30 am
bjn wrote:
Thu Jun 08, 2023 10:42 am
Given the backers of privatisation fund the Tories, you could definitely argue that it was rent seeking to privatise the water companies in the first place.
The impulse to privatise the water companies was very much the PSBR and the large increase in water charges. The government couldn't provide them with the capital they needed, and didn't want to take the blame for the large water price increases needed to pay for the large capital investments. So privatisation was a good solution for that. And the water companies were fat enough with inefficiencies that some cost savings could set off the price increases. Though some water companies, especially some of the former statutory water companies, needing massive improvement works, did have huge price increases.

But doubtless the bankers and financiers of the City were keen to encourage Mrs Thatcher in her "popular capitalism" approach. A lot of commentators at the time thought that it would have been much cheaper and more effective to privatise them through trade sales to existing companies, as had happened for a number of other privatisations such as the shipbuilding and defence assets. But that would have made a lot less money for the City money-grubbers.

We can locate various other present Tory policies that give advantage to various money-grubbers who do little for the real economy, but help fund the Tory party. Doubtless utterly coincidental.
One of my bug bears is the refusal for the UK to have any sort of industrial policy, with the sole exception of doing whatever the city wants to keep the money flowing through the middlemens’s avaricious hands.

IvanV
Stummy Beige
Posts: 2663
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 11:12 am

Re: sh.t in Rivers

Post by IvanV » Thu Jun 08, 2023 2:13 pm

dyqik wrote:
Thu Jun 08, 2023 12:07 pm
IvanV wrote:
Thu Jun 08, 2023 11:30 am
The impulse to privatise the water companies was very much the PSBR and the large increase in water charges. The government couldn't didn't want to provide them with the capital they needed, and didn't want to take the blame for the large water price increases needed to pay for the large capital investments.
FTFY. The government could have borrowed what was needed.
Britain had only recently been bailed out by the IMF, which limited government borrowing. Inflation had only just been brought down from high levels, and could easily have been started up again if the markets were spooked by what it saw as excessive fiscal looseness. There were certainly substantial practical limitations on government borrowing if further crisis was to be avoided.

We would now generally say that money was unnecessarily tight in the early years of the Thatcher government, causing more pain and unemployment than was really necessary. We didn't know very much about how to get out of stagflation in those days, it was a new economic problem and the solutions were not well known. To get public spending and investment down, the government was being utterly draconian not just on the things it had to put money into, but also on what local government could spend and invest - in those days the local sector was much larger in proportion than today. The government was certainly scared by the large new capital requirements of the EC's water quality laws just coming in.

Overall, it was certainly a problem that there was a large number of claims on the limited government borrowing, following widespread under-investment through much of the 70s, and the need to escape from stagflation. And so, where public capital could more easily and controllably be replaced by private capital, the government reasonably sought to do that through its programme of privatisations.

We can now say that there was more room than the Thatcher government said it had for government borrowing at that time. What would have been the best thing to do with that additional fiscal freedom? Not privatise the water companies? Or be more liberal with the local government sector, the railways, the schools, the NHS?

So you can argue that privatising the water companies was, as single item, strictly unnecessary. But clearly there were substantial capital constraints on the public sector in those days. It is not clear that avoiding the privatisation of the water companies was the best way to have used the additional fiscal freedom the government in reality actually had.

IvanV
Stummy Beige
Posts: 2663
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 11:12 am

Re: sh.t in Rivers

Post by IvanV » Thu Jun 08, 2023 2:16 pm

bjn wrote:
Thu Jun 08, 2023 12:34 pm
At a much lower rate than any private company could.
Actually financing costs for private water companies have only been at modest premium to government borrowing rates. And when government provides capital at it's own borrowing rate, there is a hidden subsidy of the risk premium that the government is assuming to itself.

So often I would agree that things have been made a lot more expensive by use of private capital - nuclear power stations for example. But I think it is less clear for the water sector where the private sector does not add a substantial risk premium.

IvanV
Stummy Beige
Posts: 2663
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 11:12 am

Re: sh.t in Rivers

Post by IvanV » Thu Jun 08, 2023 2:26 pm

bjn wrote:
Thu Jun 08, 2023 12:36 pm
One of my bug bears is the refusal for the UK to have any sort of industrial policy, with the sole exception of doing whatever the city wants to keep the money flowing through the middlemens’s avaricious hands.
The second point there, I certainly accept.

One of the reasons we backed away from industrial policy was that we were so very bad at it. Whenever we played at it, disaster and utter waste of government funds resulted. This was whichever party was in power.

Our present government, which has been much more industrial policy friendly than its conservative ancestors, has regularly spoken of trying to develop various industries. And we have recently been laughing at its ridiculous attempts to get EV battery manufacturing going here. There's been a serious of ridiculous nonsense like that. It's all very well to say that the solution to that is just to do it competently instead. But having been incompetent over it for at least 60 years, it's not going to change in a hurry.

For many years, therefore, our aim was to avoid having an industrial policy, while also largely preventing our closest competitors in the EU from having one too through state aids restrictions. And in that, we were largely successful, within that narrow aim, ignoring the rest of the world.

But what we overlooked was the growth of China, and its dirty industrial policy game to monopolise various key industries. But industrial policies against that really needed concerted action by multiple EU nations. It's very difficult for any individual European nation to devise its own industrial policy in the face of China.

User avatar
bjn
Stummy Beige
Posts: 2916
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2019 4:58 pm
Location: London

Re: sh.t in Rivers

Post by bjn » Wed Jun 28, 2023 9:10 am

Privatisation is going well then…

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... r-collapse

IvanV
Stummy Beige
Posts: 2663
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 11:12 am

Re: sh.t in Rivers

Post by IvanV » Wed Jun 28, 2023 10:00 am

bjn wrote:
Wed Jun 28, 2023 9:10 am
Privatisation is going well then…

https://www.theguardian.com/business/20 ... r-collapse
More accurately, regulation of private water and sewerage companies has been going badly. The curiosity is that it was allowed to go on and on and on until we get to this point.

I often date the reduction in the quality of regulation in this country to the institutional changes brought in by Blair government. Previously regulators had a sole Director General, who was where the bucked stopped, both for policy and the management of the organisation. Blair changed this into a separated structure, with a Chief Executive who managed the organisation, and a Board who were responsible for policy. The Board comprised (typically) a 2-day-per week chairman and about 4 other 1-day-per-week board members. So the CE, who was getting the staff to do the work to support policy, was not responsible for the results of that work, as decisions were made by these part-timers who were remote from the policy work being carried out, and had little time to get to grips with it. It is often suspected Blair made this change to extend his powers of patronage, put "suitable" people on the board, and exercise some influence over the alarmingly independent-minded regulators, such as Sir Ian Byatt the former water Director General. So I think this is when the quality of regulatory decisions went down.

In relation to Thames Water, it was already evident to many there was a problem as long ago as the mid-2000s. Thames Water was first taken private in 2001 when it was bought by Germany multi-utility RWE. Those same issues of poor performance, just the same faults, persisted in RWE's day - high leakage, repeatedly prosecuted for pollution. It was widely understood that dealing with leakage in densely populated urban areas is expensive, and that's why they weren't doing very much. Similar issue with the sewers, so many of them the original Bazalgette sewers from the 19th century which had been so well built they had lasted. But with pressure over the level of water charges, it was too toxic a point to deal with.

It is generally understood RWE sold it because they felt couldn't fix the performance within the available funding from permitted charges to customers. As a multi-utility, we surmise that the very publicly reported poor performance was bad for their reputation. Nevertheless, to my surprise, they made a good profit by selling it on. But evidently by by selling it on to people with a purely financial reputation, who were measured by the bottom line they achieved, and had less worry about leaking and overflowing pipes.

The overflows have been relieved to some important degree, since those days, by the Thames Tideway Tunnel, a sewerage megascheme to deal with a shortage of sewerage capacity. Though there were many back then that felt that a more rigorous local approach would have been cheaper and more effective. The tunnel deals with the capacity shortage at a high level, but would leave many localised capacity shortages, which I guess is why Thames is still in the poo over this. But as time went on without doing that localised work, the need for the expensive tunnel grew. Having got to that point, the government were actually quite clever in taking the financing of the tunnel out of Thames' hands, and getting very cheap private finance for it, by de-risking it. A much more continental approach for once. A rare piece of good financial design, short of using public finance.

noggins
Snowbonk
Posts: 572
Joined: Wed Nov 13, 2019 1:30 pm

Re: sh.t in Rivers

Post by noggins » Thu Jun 29, 2023 1:51 pm

Can a uk government bankrupt a private utility with fines then offer the other creditors pennies in the pound?

IvanV
Stummy Beige
Posts: 2663
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 11:12 am

Re: sh.t in Rivers

Post by IvanV » Thu Jun 29, 2023 4:03 pm

noggins wrote:
Thu Jun 29, 2023 1:51 pm
Can a uk government bankrupt a private utility with fines then offer the other creditors pennies in the pound?
If the fines are properly levied, then they have to be paid, and that essentially comes out of the shareholders' pockets. Debt-holders are more secure.

If the creditors can show that the government was playing a game to push it into bankruptcy, they'll have a claim against the government.

Something more or less like that happened with Railtrack. Railtrack was headed for insolvency given its funding at the time. But there was exceptional new information that justified a new funding settlement. The regulator, Tom Winsor, was set to reconsider its funding. But the government put it into administration before he could. Winsor was furious. And the shareholders could point to what happened. The government decided it didn't want a lot of publicity with a court case, which would make apparent the optionality of that renationalisation (which was finally admitted to a dozen or so years later), so it settled with the shareholders, who did quite well out of it. There was no question of defaulting on the debt.

So, utilities can head for bankruptcy. The debt looks pretty secure to me, because at some point the government more or less has to take them into special administration, and then it will be responsible for the debt. Can it force the debtors to take a haircut after it has taken them over, if they weren't already in default? Can they get into technical default and carry on operating before they go into administration? Not sure.

User avatar
Sciolus
Dorkwood
Posts: 1314
Joined: Mon Nov 11, 2019 6:42 pm

Re: sh.t in Rivers

Post by Sciolus » Thu Jun 29, 2023 6:56 pm

IvanV wrote:
Wed Jun 28, 2023 10:00 am
More accurately, regulation of private water and sewerage companies has been going badly. The curiosity is that it was allowed to go on and on and on until we get to this point.
Completely unrelatedly, here are some excerpts from the CV of Cathryn Ross:

2023: Joint interim chief executive, Thames Water
2021-2023: Strategy and Regulatory Affairs Director, Thames Water
2013-2017: Chief executive, Ofwat.

User avatar
Fishnut
After Pie
Posts: 2447
Joined: Mon Nov 11, 2019 1:15 pm
Location: UK

Re: sh.t in Rivers

Post by Fishnut » Thu Jun 29, 2023 7:44 pm

I'm at an online event being hosted by West Country Voices where they've premiered this short film they've produced about phosphates. It's focused on the Somerset Levels but should be of interest to anyone in the UK.
it's okay to say "I don't know"

User avatar
bjn
Stummy Beige
Posts: 2916
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2019 4:58 pm
Location: London

Re: sh.t in Rivers

Post by bjn » Thu Jun 29, 2023 10:13 pm

IvanV wrote:
Thu Jun 29, 2023 4:03 pm
So, utilities can head for bankruptcy. The debt looks pretty secure to me, because at some point the government more or less has to take them into special administration, and then it will be responsible for the debt. Can it force the debtors to take a haircut after it has taken them over, if they weren't already in default? Can they get into technical default and carry on operating before they go into administration? Not sure.
Quoi? If a company goes bankrupt, the debtors are normally left with whatever the receivers can get for the remaining assets and that’s it. Why would/should the nation be on the hook instead if the government took them into special administration?

Millennie Al
After Pie
Posts: 1621
Joined: Mon Mar 16, 2020 4:02 am

Re: sh.t in Rivers

Post by Millennie Al » Fri Jun 30, 2023 12:06 am

bjn wrote:
Thu Jun 29, 2023 10:13 pm
f a company goes bankrupt, the debtors are normally left with whatever the receivers can get for the remaining assets and that’s it. Why would/should the nation be on the hook instead if the government took them into special administration?
Because when a company goes bankrupt it ceases trading, whereas Thames Water must continue to operate as normal since it has such an essential function. Therefore, in the case of corporate failure, there will need to be guarantees that debts will be paid. Otherwise suppliers will stop supplying, so workers tying to fix leaks won't be able to buy diesel for their vans, nor the materials needed for repairs etc, and at a higher level, power companies will cut off supplies. That's what would happen if it was a normal business - e.g. a shop.

Also, I'd be particularly interested in what IvanV can tell us about this story from 2017: How Macquarie bank left Thames Water with extra £2bn debt which suggests that Macquarie managed to get Thames to pay off a loan which Macquarie owed contrary to the regulations, leaving Thames worse off as a result.

IvanV
Stummy Beige
Posts: 2663
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 11:12 am

Re: sh.t in Rivers

Post by IvanV » Fri Jun 30, 2023 8:30 am

Millennie Al wrote:
Fri Jun 30, 2023 12:06 am
bjn wrote:
Thu Jun 29, 2023 10:13 pm
f a company goes bankrupt, the debtors are normally left with whatever the receivers can get for the remaining assets and that’s it. Why would/should the nation be on the hook instead if the government took them into special administration?
Because when a company goes bankrupt it ceases trading, whereas Thames Water must continue to operate as normal since it has such an essential function. Therefore, in the case of corporate failure, there will need to be guarantees that debts will be paid. Otherwise suppliers will stop supplying, so workers tying to fix leaks won't be able to buy diesel for their vans, nor the materials needed for repairs etc, and at a higher level, power companies will cut off supplies. That's what would happen if it was a normal business - e.g. a shop.
Which is why water debt is so cheap, it is considered very secure.
Millennie Al wrote:
Fri Jun 30, 2023 12:06 am
Also, I'd be particularly interested in what IvanV can tell us about this story from 2017: How Macquarie bank left Thames Water with extra £2bn debt which suggests that Macquarie managed to get Thames to pay off a loan which Macquarie owed contrary to the regulations, leaving Thames worse off as a result.
If Martin Blaiklock said it, that is an expert opinion from someone who has a detailed understanding of this kind of thing. He became a strong critic of the methods of private infrastructure finance in this country, which is unusual in an infrastructure financier who profited from that kind of thing. And so you will get the "he would say that wouldn't he" type dismissal of anything he said, by those who find it uncomfortable.

There is a question there for Ofwat about why they didn't enforce. They don't seem to have denied that is what happened. I'll ask my friends again, to see if they can add to it. There are a number of possible answers. One is "Indeed, why didn't they enforce?" And another one is, because they realised that in practice they couldn't, at least not without greater ructions than they would want to cause. Because it is all very well writing "thou shalt not" in your rules, but it is much more difficult devising practical, effective and proportionate methods of enforcement within those rules.

Sadly Blaiklock died about 18 months after that BBC article. As his obituary in the FT says, he had a strong understanding of utility finance, from the inside perspective of being a financier. He recognised when things weren't right from a public perspective, and called them out, resigning from certain jobs he felt unethical, which probably didn't earn him friends in that industry. In 2017, he published a well-regarded (by some) book, Infrastructure Finance: An inside view, though probably less well-regarded by the finance industry he came from, which might be how he ended up talking to the BBC about this. I'd like to have read it, but unfortunately it was published by an academic publisher at the extortionate price of academic books.

I had the great fortune of sitting next to him at a conference dinner shortly before he died. He was very impressive, knowledgeable, lively and full of life, for all that I was saddened but unsurprised to learn that he died shortly after. He certainly didn't want to stop, and had a lot more to give.

User avatar
JQH
After Pie
Posts: 2141
Joined: Mon Nov 11, 2019 3:30 pm
Location: Sar Flandan

Re: sh.t in Rivers

Post by JQH » Fri Jun 30, 2023 10:12 am

If the private water companies were incurring debt to provide money to pay dividends, then those dividend payments were fraudulent and the people who made the decision to borrow money for such purposes should be surcharged.

The government should renationalise and pay compensation to shareholders based on the value of the company - which based on the debt level is didley squat. The government will pay suppliers and sub contractors for all works done on or after nationalisation day. They are not responsible for debts incurred before that date.
And remember that if you botch the exit, the carnival of reaction may be coming to a town near you.

Fintan O'Toole

IvanV
Stummy Beige
Posts: 2663
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 11:12 am

Re: sh.t in Rivers

Post by IvanV » Fri Jun 30, 2023 11:05 am

JQH wrote:
Fri Jun 30, 2023 10:12 am
If the private water companies were incurring debt to provide money to pay dividends, then those dividend payments were fraudulent and the people who made the decision to borrow money for such purposes should be surcharged.

The government should renationalise and pay compensation to shareholders based on the value of the company - which based on the debt level is didley squat. The government will pay suppliers and sub contractors for all works done on or after nationalisation day. They are not responsible for debts incurred before that date.
In general, gearing up a company - increasing debt and reducing equity - when it isn't (yet) below the waterline is not illegal, and happens all the time. It's how a lot of active company acquirers work. And lenders won't lend unless the risk is low enough for the interest charged, as far as they can see it.

The difference in this case is that there were special financial ring-fencing rules, which should have stopped the gearing up, but were apparently not enforced. Legally it is probably rather difficult now to go back and undo what happened, specifically addressing the people at the time who benefited from the payouts enabled by the additional borrowing. We say it was "owned by Macquarie", but in reality it was owned by an investment fund managed by Macquarie. Macquarie were themselves investors in that fund, but there was other money in that fund and the other investors may have been numerous and diverse, and rapidly changed like any other traded fund. It was a time-limited fund, so it sold Thames because it was obliged by its rules to sell off everything when it came to an end. That's the kind of investment vehicle Macquarie often provides.

The government absolutely has the power to put it into special administration, and has made clear it will do that if the company becomes financially unable to operate. And indeed the shareholders may be due very little in compensation. This is not like the stage-managed administration of Railtrack, where the shareholders did have a case to get their money back.

At the moment it seems like the company owners are reversing some of the over-gearing, to avoid going into administration. They say they have increased equity by £500m. That's only 1/4 of how much MacQuarie previously geared it up. But it is a start, and there may need to be more steps like that that to avoid administration and/or other adverse regulatory effects. If Ofwat finds the gumption to do what it should have been doing for many years.

User avatar
bjn
Stummy Beige
Posts: 2916
Joined: Wed Sep 25, 2019 4:58 pm
Location: London

Re: sh.t in Rivers

Post by bjn » Fri Jun 30, 2023 1:22 pm

So, as the company can’t be allowed to fail like a normal company, because it provides an essential public service, the nation will be forced to absorb the debt it was laden with via financial “engineering”. Which is what I assumed the answer would be.

So the public subsidies private gain. Again. And what regulations we had to prevent that weren’t even enforced. Lovely.

Tell me again why we privatised it in the first place, wasn’t it to stop the government having to borrow to fund it and/or massively raise water rates? That worked out well.

User avatar
Sciolus
Dorkwood
Posts: 1314
Joined: Mon Nov 11, 2019 6:42 pm

Re: sh.t in Rivers

Post by Sciolus » Fri Jun 30, 2023 3:25 pm

Exactly the same happened with Southern Cross more than ten years ago, in a sector that is even more poorly regulated than utilities. This needs to be managed on a statutory basis across the too-big-to-fail sector, not piecemeal according to the whims/competence/corruption of specific industry regulators.

IvanV
Stummy Beige
Posts: 2663
Joined: Mon May 17, 2021 11:12 am

Re: sh.t in Rivers

Post by IvanV » Fri Jun 30, 2023 4:23 pm

Sciolus wrote:
Fri Jun 30, 2023 3:25 pm
Exactly the same happened with Southern Cross more than ten years ago, in a sector that is even more poorly regulated than utilities. This needs to be managed on a statutory basis across the too-big-to-fail sector, not piecemeal according to the whims/competence/corruption of specific industry regulators.
That's the care home group that sold and lease-backed all its homes to another subsidiary of the owner, and then sold off the operator. That's what I think of as the split business trick, which is a bit different. You need a sucker to take the bad side off your hands.

So you split a business in two, with one providing something essential to the other. As you control both, you can dictate the terms of the contract between them to the advantage of one party, the one you keep, the good company. Then you sell the bad company to the suckers, if you can find some.

The first time I came across that trick was the Channel Tunnel. The concession to build and operate the tunnel was awarded to a consortium of construction companies, who really only wanted to build it and be paid for doing so. So they created an operating company, who were essentially mortgaged to the builders to pay off the construction cost of the tunnel, on good terms for them. And they sold the operating company off to the suckers, ie the general public. The privatisation ethos of the time made the general public receptive to buying shares in that kind of company in mass flotations. They got a bribe with some free travel rights through the tunnel on the shuttle. My father brought some shares, partly attracted by the free tickets, but afaik he has never used his free travel rights. I think the share value had fallen to about 2% of what he paid for them when it was rescued. They would have been worth nothing if the French hadn't insisted on some special protections for shareholders, not usual in Britain.

You can also play the split business trick when you sell the assets rather than the operator. A proposal to do that, although not completed, once came from Yorkshire Water, back in the 90s, shortly after the new not-for-profit Welsh Water came into existence. It proposed to vest Yorkshire Water - ie the assets - into a non-profit company, similar to Welsh Water, who would be the licensed water company regulated by Ofwat. The difference with Welsh Water would be that Yorkshire Water would outsource the management and operation of the assets on a long-term contract to Kelda Group, then as today the private parent company of Yorkshire Water, who would remain a private company, under terms they specified before the split. Ofwat saw through that and successfully deterred it.

Millennie Al
After Pie
Posts: 1621
Joined: Mon Mar 16, 2020 4:02 am

Re: sh.t in Rivers

Post by Millennie Al » Sat Jul 01, 2023 1:55 am

bjn wrote:
Fri Jun 30, 2023 1:22 pm
Tell me again why we privatised it in the first place, wasn’t it to stop the government having to borrow to fund it and/or massively raise water rates? That worked out well.
That was over 30 years ago. It seems to have worked fairly well, actually, as the government has indeed avoided a lot of borrowing (or, of course, avoided things getting worse through not spending money at all).

In contrast to the private sector, which may need bailing out, obviously public bodies never need bailing out. Except a quick search for "bankrupt council" shows these:

English councils battling financial ruin (from 2021)

Thurrock becomes latest council to declare effective bankruptcy (last December)

Woking Borough Council: Government steps in over £2bn debt (last month)

Birmingham City Council crisis live as vital services face chaos over £650 million equal pay claim (28th June)


There is indeed a difference between a private body and a public one when it comes to bailouts: for private bodies there can be discussion over whether to bail it out of not, while for a public body there can be no discussion because the government will always have to pay and there are no shareholders to take your anger out on.

User avatar
tenchboy
After Pie
Posts: 1891
Joined: Tue Nov 12, 2019 5:18 pm
Location: Down amongst the potamogeton.

Re: sh.t in Rivers

Post by tenchboy » Thu Dec 07, 2023 12:20 pm

bbc.co.uk/news
Rookie mistake there. He should'a saved up a year's worth and dumped it on the village green.
Funny how they always prosecute the little guy and let the behemoth run and run.
Maybe his wife had insisted that he borrow more money than he was worth and at an interest rate that drained all his income which meant that he couldn't afford to install a new lavatory pan.
Or something.
Anyway: man has a piss by the side of the road.
If you want me Steve, just Snapchat me yeah? You know how to Snapchap me doncha Steve? You just...

Post Reply