Hurrah, Sir Adrian Montague, the chair of Thames Water, is scheduled to make another of his rare public appearances. On Tuesday, he will be at the environment select committee, the forum where 18 months ago he gave a strong signal that the company’s financial crisis was even worse than feared.
The shareholders, in their standoff with the regulator over bills, wanted to know the business was “investable”, said Montague. Three months later those investors decided it wasn’t and refused to put in another penny. That forced the current refinancing contest that has seen KKR, the US private equity group, chosen as preferred bidder at the end of March.
