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The board of Thames Water was locked in crunch talks on Wednesday as shareholders prepare to dilute a pledge to inject funds into the company that would secure its survival.

Sky News has learnt that the directors of Britain’s biggest water company met to discuss its financial future after months of talks involving debt and equity investors, lenders, regulators and government officials.

One industry source said that Thames Water‘s shareholders, who include the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) and China’s sovereign wealth fund, were poised to conclude that they were unable to contribute hundreds of millions of pounds of promised funding after Ofwat, the industry watchdog, indicated that it would not bow to the company’s demands for a package of regulatory concessions.

Talks were continuing into Wednesday evening, and it remained possible that the picture could change ahead of an announcement expected to be made by the company on Thursday morning.

Thames Water’s shareholders had indicated that they were prepared to commit £3.25bn to the company in the coming years, with the first £750m due to be injected this year.

The investors’ likely decision to water down that commitment is not irreversible and could still be changed if the financial profile of a future investment improved, said a source close to one of them.

The company employs about 7,000 people, and serves nearly a quarter of Britain’s population.

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December: Thames Water can’t pay £190m

It is, however, drowning in well over £15bn of debt, with huge interest payments required to service it.

Thames Water’s shareholders also include the Canadian pension fund Omers, Infinity Investments, a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, and the BT Pension Scheme.

The utility has been seeking concessions including a 40% rise in consumers’ water bills, an easing of capital spending requirements and leniency on forthcoming regulatory penalties.

If the shareholders ultimately confirm their decision to pull the plug on additional financial support that was announced last year, it would appear to leave the heavily indebted company with few viable options to secure its future.

Last summer, Sky News revealed that Whitehall officials had started drawing up contingency plans for Thames Water’s collapse amid fears that it might not survive.

However, in an investment plan unveiled in October, the company said its shareholders were “stepping up to support… much-needed investment, underscoring their commitment to delivering Thames’ turnaround and life’s essential service for the benefit of our customers, communities and the environment”.

“Shareholders have already invested £500m of new funds in 2023,” it said at the time.

“In addition, they have agreed to provide a further £750m in new equity funding… subject to satisfaction of certain conditions, including the preparation of a business plan that underpins a more focused turnaround that delivers targeted performance improvements for customers, the environment and other stakeholders over the next three years and is supported by appropriate regulatory arrangements.

“Our shareholders have also acknowledged the need for additional equity investments indicatively in the region of £2.5bn in [the next regulatory period].

“In aggregate, this would equate to total equity investment of £3.7bn, the largest equity support package ever proposed in the UK water sector.”

The £750m referred to in that announcement is now unlikely to proceed without profound regulatory changes, the company is expected to say on Thursday.

If Thames Water did eventually collapse, a temporary nationalisation would involve placing the company’s operating business into a special administration regime (SAR) akin to that used when the energy supplier Bulb collapsed in 2021.

That would ignite concerns in government that the triggering of a SAR could ultimately cost taxpayers billions of pounds.

Ultimately, the Bulb administration cost the public purse a far smaller sum, but water industry ownership restrictions which prevent consolidation mean this figure could be dwarfed if Thames Water was to fail.

Thames Water serves 15 million customers across London and the south-east of England, and has come under intense pressure in recent years because of its poor record on leaks, sewage contamination, executive pay and shareholder dividends.

It is facing multiple fines and regulatory investigations, including into the payment of dividends to Kemble Water, its parent company.

The company has been beset by management turmoil, with Sarah Bentley, its chief executive for the last three years, resigning last summer.

She was replaced by Chris Weston, the former Aggreko chief.

The financial peril in which Thames Water finds itself has sparked calls from critics of the privatised industry to renationalise all of the UK’s major water companies.

A number of the companies have been forced to seek extra funding from their shareholders, with the state of the water industry likely to feature prominently during the general election campaign.

Nearly £1.4bn of the company’s bonds mature by the end of this year, with Ofwat price controls meaning water companies have little scope to generate additional income.

Read more:
Thames Water lenders hire EY as debt deadline looms
Thames Water bosses admit it can’t meet April debt repayment
Water firms face backlash over record sewage spills in England

In total, tens of billions of pounds have been handed to shareholders in water utilities across Britain since privatisation, stoking public and political anger given the industry’s frequent mismanagement.

Earlier this month, Sky News revealed that a group of lenders to Thames Water’s parent company had engaged advisers weeks before a £190m debt held by Britain’s biggest water utility falls due.

Thames Water and a spokesman for its shareholders declined to comment on Wednesday evening.

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Heathrow bosses ‘warned about substation’ days before major power outage, MP committee hears

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Heathrow bosses 'warned about substation' days before major power outage, MP committee hears

Heathrow Airport bosses had been warned of a potential substation failures less than a week before a major power outage closed the airport for a day, a committee of MPs has heard.

The chief executive of Heathrow Airline Operators’ Committee Nigel Wicking told MPs of the Transport Committee he raised issues about resilience on 15 March after cable and wiring took out lights on a runway.

A fire at an electricity substation in west London meant the power supply was disrupted to Europe’s largest airport for a day – causing travel chaos for around 200,000 passengers.

“I’d actually warned Heathrow of concerns that we had with regard to the substations and my concern was resilience”, Mr Wicking said.

“So the first occasion was to team Heathrow director on the 15th of the month of March. And then I also spoke to the chief operating officer and chief customer officer two days before regarding this concern.

“And it was following a number of, a couple of incidents of, unfortunately, theft, of wire and cable around some of the power supply that on one of those occasions, took out the lights on the runway for a period of time. That obviously made me concerned.”

Mr Wicking also said he believed Heathrow’s Terminal 5 could have been ready to receive repatriation flights by “late morning” on the day of the closure, and that “there was opportunity also to get flights out”.

However, Heathrow chief executive Thomas Woldbye said keeping the airport open during last month’s power outage would have been “disastrous”.

There was a risk of having “literally tens of thousands of people stranded in the airport, where we have nowhere to put them”, Mr Woldbye said.

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Zhenhao Zou: More than 20 new potential victims come forward after ‘prolific’ rapist jailed for assaulting 10 women

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Zhenhao Zou: More than 20 new potential victims come forward after 'prolific' rapist jailed for assaulting 10 women

Another 23 female potential victims have reported that they may have been raped by Zhenhao Zou – the Chinese PhD student detectives believe may be one of the country’s most prolific sex offenders.

The Metropolitan Police launched an international appeal after Zou, 28, was convicted of drugging and raping 10 women following a trial at the Inner London Crown Court last month.

Detectives have not confirmed whether the 23 people who have come forward add to their estimates that more than 50 other women worldwide may have been targeted by the University College London student.

Metropolitan Police commander Kevin Southworth said: “We have victims reaching out to us from different parts of the globe.

“At the moment, the primary places where we believe offending may have occurred at this time appears to be both in England, here in London, and over in China.”

Metropolitan Police commander Kevin Southworth
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Metropolitan Police commander Kevin Southworth

Zou lived in a student flat in Woburn Place, near Russell Square in central London, and later in a flat in the Uncle building in Churchyard Row in Elephant and Castle, south London.

Read more: How a student described as ‘smart and charming’ was unmasked as a prolific sexual predator

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He had also been a student at Queen’s University Belfast, where he studied mechanical engineering from 2017 until 2019. Police say they have not had any reports from Belfast but added they were “open-minded about that”.

“Given how active and prolific Zou appears to have been with his awful offending, there is every prospect that he could have offended anywhere in the world,” Mr Southworth said.

“We wouldn’t want anyone to write off the fact they may have been a victim of his behaviour simply by virtue of the fact that you are from a certain place.

“The bottom line is, if you think you may have been affected by Zhenhao Zou or someone you know may have been, please don’t hold back. Please make contact with us.”

***ONLY USE IF HE IS CONVICTED OF AT LEAST TWO RAPES***It is feared Zou may have carried out dozens more sex crimes. Pic: Met Police
Image:
Pic: Met Police

Zou used hidden or handheld cameras to record his attacks, and kept the footage and often the women’s belongings as souvenirs.

He targeted young, Chinese women, inviting them to his flat for drinks or to study, before drugging and assaulting them.

Zou was convicted of 11 counts of rape, with two of the offences relating to one victim, as well as three counts of voyeurism, 10 counts of possession of an extreme pornographic image, one count of false imprisonment and three counts of possession of a controlled drug with intent to commit a sexual offence, namely butanediol.

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Moment police arrest rapist student

Mr Southworth said: “Of those 10 victims, several were not identified so as we could be sure exactly where in the world they were, but their cases, nevertheless, were sufficient to see convictions at court.

“There were also, at the time, 50 videos that were identified of further potential female victims of Zhenhao Zou’s awful crimes.

“We are still working to identify all of those women in those videos.

“We have now, thankfully, had 23 victim survivors come forward through the appeal that we’ve conducted, some of whom may be identical with some of the females that we saw in those videos, some of whom may even turn out to be from the original indicted cases.”

Mr Southworth added: “Ultimately, now it’s the investigation team’s job to professionally pick our way through those individual pieces of evidence, those individual victims’ stories, to see if we can identify who may have been a victim, when and where, so then we can bring Zou to justice for the full extent of his crimes.”

Mr Southworth said more resources will be put into the investigation, and that detectives are looking to understand “what may have happened without wishing to revisit the trauma, but in a way that enables [the potential victims] to give evidence in the best possible way.”

The Metropolitan Police is appealing to anyone who thinks they may have been targeted by Zou to contact the force either by emailing survivors@met.police.uk, or via the major incident public portal on the force’s website.

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Girl, 11, who went missing after entering River Thames named

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Girl, 11, who went missing after entering River Thames named

An 11-year-old girl who went missing after entering the River Thames has been named as Kaliyah Coa.

An “extensive search” has been carried out after the incident in east London at around 1.30pm on Monday.

Police said the child had been playing during a school inset day and entered the water near Barge House Causeway, North Woolwich.

A recovery mission is now said to be under way to find Kaliyah along the Thames, with the Metropolitan Police carrying out an extensive examination of the area.

Location of Barge House Causeway, North Woolwich, where 11-year-old girl Kaliyah Coa went into the River Thames on 31/03
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Barge House Causeway is a concrete slope in North Woolwich leading into the Thames

Chief Superintendent Dan Card thanked members of the public and emergency teams who responded to “carry out a large-scale search during a highly pressurised and distressing time”.

He also confirmed drone technology and boats were being used to “conduct a thorough search over a wide area”.

He added: “Our specialist officers are supporting Kaliyah’s family through this deeply upsetting time and our thoughts go out to all those impacted by what has happened.”

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“Equally we appreciate this has affected the wider community who have been extremely supportive. You will see extra officers in the area during the coming days.”

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On Monday, Kerry Benadjaoud, a 62-year-old resident from the area, said she heard of the incident from her next-door neighbour, who “was outside doing her garden and there was two little kids running, and they said ‘my friend’s in the water'”.

When she arrived at the scene with a life ring, a man told her he had called the police, “but he said at the time he could see her hands going down”.

Barge House Causeway is a concrete slope that goes directly into the River Thames and is used to transport boats.

Residents pointed out that it appeared to be covered in moss and was slippery.

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