One of the best convenience stores from British companies is aligned to direct a rescue of several billion pounds in the Thames after the favorite tenderer of the company has moved away.
Sky News can reveal that Mike Mctighe is working with the largest group of Thames Water creditors on a plan aimed at restructuring business debts and injecting new funds in the hope of avoiding nationalization.
Mr. Mctighe, whose presidents portfolio includes the publisher of the Daily Telegraph and Openreach, the infrastructure arm of the BT group, is said to have started to reach stakeholders in recent weeks.
If the proposal of class A creditors is successfully executed, Mr. Mctighe would probably take over as president of Thames Water, according to people close to the situation.
Mr. MCTIGHE has acquired a reputation as an expert in recovery, but also companies such as IG Group, the Financial Spreadbetting Company and Ensemble Financial Services, the non -banking lender.
The recruitment of such an eminent businessman to direct the efforts of lenders will add momentum to a plan that is increasingly like the alternative to the landing of British taxpayers with a large rescue.
The group’s proposal would include the exchange of several billion pounds from Thames Water debt for equity, as well as the injection of new substantial funding.
Thames Water is the largest British water service, serving more than 15 million customers.
However, decades of poor performance and financial engineering let her transport nearly 20 billion pounds in debt and cope with hundreds of millions of pounds of regulatory fines.
Pic: Istock
The group of class A creditors, which represents around 13 billion pounds sterling of Thames Water loans, includes some of the most powerful investors in the world.
Elliott Management, the company based in New York, is one of the people exposed to a collapse that could leave water from the Thames in a special administration regime (SAR) – a process of insolvency sponsored by the government intended for key infrastructure service providers.
The other members of the group of creditors include institutions such as Aberdeen, Investco, Apollo Global Management and M&G.
A source close to the group of creditors said: “We have made a huge diligence and worked on a delay time for recovery.
“We are the only tenderers who will be able to complete this transaction within the necessary period.”
The fact that Mr. Mctighe was convinced to join their efforts hoping that a solution from the private sector to the Thames Water crisis can still be found.
On Tuesday, the company announced that KKR, its favorite equity partner in the past two months, had decided not to conclude an agreement.
Sky News revealed that the talks between Henry Kravis, the co-founder of the KKR, and the best sales advisor to Sir Keir Starmer had taken place during the weekend to prevent the agreement from collapsing.
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It was not clear on Tuesday if CKI, the company based in Hong Kong, which controls the asset bands of the British infrastructure, could seek to rekindle its interest in an agreement with Wames Water.
Sir Adrian Montague, the current president of the company, said: “Although the news of today are disappointing, we continue to believe that a lasting recapitalization of the company is in the best interests of all stakeholders and to continue working with our creditors and the stakeholders to achieve this objective.”
In recent weeks, Thames Water has been sentenced to a fine of 123 million pounds sterling by OFWAT for separate transgressions relating to dividend payments and environmental pollution, and was involved in a bitter political row to find out if the retention payments that he had aligned for managers were classified as a bonus.
The company was also at the center of a legal battle which led to the class A group of lenders with an emergency loan of 3 billion pounds Sterling in March following a legal challenge launched by a smaller group of creditors.
The government described Thames Water as “stable” on Tuesday, but said it was ready to intervene and take control of the business if necessary.
The company actually makes a deadline at the end of July to finalize a rescue agreement due to a reference to its regulatory regulation of five years to the Competition and Markets Authority.
A spokesperson for class A creditors refused to comment on Tuesday evening.