In an interview on BBC Radio 5’s “Wake Up to Money” programme broadcast on 27 September, 2024, Tim Whittaker, Research Director at Scientific Infra & Private Assets, commented on the latest woes faced by Thames Water which has recently been downgraded by two major credit rating agencies and risks running out of cash in December rather than in May 2025, facing a possible default and government intervention:

“(…) what it will mean is the debt holders will start to have to reorganise and figure out how it is that they’ll run the business and essentially what the government will do is they’ll have to step in as a special administrator, to step in, run it, make sure that they can meet all the requirements, make sure that everyone keeps on getting the water and the sewage, but then they will have to fight with all the debt holders in order to make sure that they get the money that they were promised but failed to deliver.” (…) “I think you have to watch for December to see whether or not Thames can actually borrow more money. I don’t believe that they will be able to, because they’ve suddenly run up more bills than they expected when they said, oh, we can operate until May, no problems. Suddenly, it’s now December. If you start blindsiding investors like that, it’s going to be very hard to convince them to lend you more money. And so I think by December, you’re going to start to see the government has to step in here.”

Listen to the segment here (30:25 to 36:02).

Read our research paper, “Low Tide: What the Data Showed About Thames Water”, here.