CEO Of Sewage-Spewing Thames Water Whines For Taxpayer-Backed Bonuses: "Senior Managers Are Our Most Precious Resource"
Ministers plan to use new powers to block bosses from Thames Water taking bonuses worth hundreds of thousands of pounds as the company fights for survival, the Guardian can reveal.
Britain’s biggest water company admitted this week that senior managers are in line for “substantial” bonuses linked to an emergency £3bn loan. Thames claimed the payouts were vital to retain staff and prevent rival companies from “picking off” its best employees. But the disclosure provoked fury as the company has said its finances are “hair raising” and that it had come “very close to running out of money entirely” last year.
Thames is in a desperate race to raise funds and persuade the water regulator to let it off hundreds of millions of pounds of fines or risk being renationalised. Government sources said these bonuses could be banned as soon as next month, and any paid for the last financial year, between April 2024 and April 2025, could be clawed back. The environment secretary, Steve Reed, said “the days of profiting from failure are over”.
It emerged this week that Thames was planning to use part of a £3bn emergency loan, which was meant to stabilise its finances and save it from collapse, to pay bonuses for senior executives. Thames’s chair, Sir Adrian Montague, told MPs on the environment, food and rural affairs (Efra) committee on Tuesday that the first of these bonuses would be up to 50% of their salary, arguing senior managers are its “most precious resource”.
EDIT
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2025/may/15/ministers-to-block-thames-water-paying-bosses-bonuses-out-of-emergency-loan
= new reply since forum marked as read
