Thames Water says it has received six takeover offers
Thames Water has said it has received six takeover offers and hopes to agree a deal by the end of June.
The offers come in response to an equity raise process launched by the UK’s biggest water supplier last summer.
Crisis-hit Thames Water has been battling to stave off nationalisation amid debts of more than £19bn.
Earlier this week, the utility successfully batted off an attempt by a group of secondary creditors and the Lib Dem MP Charlie Maynard, to block a £3bn emergency loan seen as critical to its short-term survival.
It said on Tuesday all bar one of the six proposals provided financial metrics, with the outlier being a bid for minority equity from one of its secondary creditors.
“Most proposals are conditional on further, and varying, regulatory support and accommodations being achieved which the company intends to progress in the coming months as part of its efforts to achieve a sustainable recapitalisation,” it added.
The suitors are understood to include the investment group Covalis, infrastructure giant KKR and Castle Water.
Thames Water serves around 16m customers in the UK. It has sought to push the industry regulator Ofwat to approve higher bills for customers so it can pay down its debt and fix creaking infrastructure.
The company in February lodged an appeal to the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) in an attempt to overrule Ofwat’s final determination on the level it can set bills for the next five years.
It was announced on Tuesday that Ofwat and Thames Water’s parent company, TWUL, had agreed to defer any official reference to the CMA for a period of 18 weeks from today.
It stressed this was not a “withdrawal of the request” and it “remains of the view that the final determination does not serve the interests of Thames Water’s customers, communities and the environment.”
Sir Adrian Montague, Thames Water’s charirman, said: “We appreciate Ofwat’s time and constructive approach to our recent discussions and look forward to working with Ofwat and our other stakeholders over the next few months to achieve our shared goal of a sustainable recapitalisation of the company, so that it may better serve its customers and stakeholders for decades to come.”