Thames Water lenders rent EY as debt deadline looms

A gaggle of lenders to Thames Water’s mum or dad firm have engaged advisers weeks earlier than a £190m debt held by Britain’s largest water utility falls due.

Sky News has learnt {that a} syndicate of financiers which is owed the sum by Kemble Water, below which Thames’s regulated operations sit, has drafted within the massive 4 accountancy agency amid rising considerations in regards to the firm’s survival.

A £190m facility is because of be repaid or prolonged by the tip of April, with the utility’s bosses telling MPs in December that it was “not currently” in a position to repay the funding.

The progress in direction of a profitable conclusion of discussions with the related lenders was unclear on Friday.

Uncertainty has surrounded the solvency of Thames Water since final June when Sky News revealed that Whitehall had begun drawing up contingency plans for its collapse.

Thames Water serves 15 million clients throughout London and the southeast of England, and has come below intense stress in recent times due to its poor document on leaks, sewage contamination, govt pay and shareholder dividends.

It is dealing with a slew of huge fines from regulators, and has requested from Ofwat a package deal of measures to shore up its funds, together with a rise in client payments of as much as 40% and delays to capital expenditure plans.

EY declined to remark.

Separately, a car headed by the outstanding City financier Edi Truell has proposed a deal to Thames Water’s pension trustees that will contain it eradicating £1.7bn of pension obligations from the corporate’s steadiness sheet.

Pension SuperFund Capital, Mr Truell’s car, has provided to construction the deal in a approach which entails no money price to Thames Water, in keeping with insiders.