Thames Water has appointed a new chief executive with military experience to lead the fight for financial survival at London’s 15-million customer utility giant.
Chris Weston, the former boss of FTSE 250 power firm Aggreko, was in the Royal Artillery in the 1980s. He was also a senior executive at Centrica and has experience of the UK and Australian telecoms sector at One Tel and Cable and Wireless. He will take up the new job in January.
Much of the job he faces to turn the troubled Thames around will relate to how if handles its £14.7 billion debt burden, which has stoked concern about the company’s viability amid calls for nationalisation.
Thames executives had to apologise to MPs this week for confusion over how it represented funding of £500 million from investors, which was actually issued as a convertible loan, repayable at 8%, rather than as a straightforward injection of fresh equity.
Weston’s immediate permanent predecessor, Sarah Bentley, left suddenly in June amid a public outcry over high pay in the industry at a time of leaking water mains and sewage overflow into rivers, which ran for more than 7,000 hours into rivers and streams last year. She was on a package worth around £1.6 million for the 2022-23 financial year
Thames' new CEO will be paid £850,000 a year in base salary, with a pension allowance of 12%, with a potential bonus payout of 156%, potentially worth over £1.3 million.
A keen fisherman, Weston said today: " I recognise that this business is critical to both society and the UK and how important it is that we restore confidence in our operations and financial position.”
His words came after interim CEOs, Cathryn Ross and Alastair Cochran, said “It is not possible to address all the challenges facing Thames Water at the same time” as it reported a drop in profits earlier this month
The regulator Ofwat is scrutinising Thames’ latest business plan, for 2025 to 2030, which calls for a 40% increase in customer bills to pay for infrastructure upgrades. If approved, the move would add around £14.55 to Londoner’s monthly bills, higher than the industry average of £13.
Thames plans to spend £4.7 billion on “investment in our network and other assets”, which it described as “a record”. It consulted 20,000 bill payers during the process and said the plan “prioritises storm overflows, bathing water status and reducing leaks and pollutions.”
Weston added today: “I am looking forward to joining Thames Water at this crucial time for the business and the wider water sector. Working with the team I will be focused on delivering the turnaround that the business has outlined and improving performance over the next few years."
