Why Labour's Growth Plan Has a Thames Water-Sized Hole
Leaders with Francine Lacqua
Bloomberg
4.6 • 64 Ratings
🗓️ 19 September 2024
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The UK’s new Labour government is pinning its hopes for growth on private investment in everything from green energy to housing, but there’s an unexpected stick in the spokes: Thames Water. Since the debt-ridden water company was declared “uninvestable” by its shareholders in March, foreign investors have been asking: If the monopoly provider of a bare necessity to nearly a quarter of the UK’s population doesn’t yield guaranteed returns, then what does?
On this episode of In the City, UK economy reporter Philip Aldrick and corporate finance reporter Abhinav Ramnarayan discuss with host Francine Lacqua how the collapse of what should be a safe investment has spooked foreign investors, and how the new Labour government can woo them back.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | You can get the news whenever you want it with Bloomberg News Now. I'm Amy Morris. And I'm Karen |
| 0:06.3 | Moscow here to tell you about our new on-demand news report delivered right to your podcast feed. |
| 0:12.4 | Bloomberg News Now is a short five-minute audio report on the day's top stories. Episodes are |
| 0:17.9 | published throughout the day with the latest information and data to keep you informed. |
| 0:22.4 | Yes, there are other products like this from a variety of news organizations, but they usually |
| 0:27.9 | rerun their radio newscasts throughout the day. That's not what we do. We create customized |
| 0:33.8 | episodes that can only be heard on Bloomberg News Now. |
| 0:39.6 | And we don't wait an hour to publish breaking news. |
| 0:43.5 | When news breaks, we'll have an episode up in your podcast feed within minutes. So you're always getting the latest stories and developments. |
| 0:46.9 | Get the reporting and the context from Bloomberg's 3,000 journalists and analysts |
| 0:51.4 | we're all over the world. |
| 0:53.0 | Listen to the latest from Bloomberg News |
| 0:54.9 | Now on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you listen. |
| 1:01.8 | Bloomberg Audio Studios. Podcasts, Radio News. Regulated assets like water, airport, and energy |
| 1:10.5 | are held by investors on the basis that usually returns are safe and predictable. |
| 1:16.3 | The owners of Thameswater, which serves, by the way, what a quarter of the UK population, disproves that. |
| 1:22.2 | And investors are risking everything. They're risking losing their investments. They've had to write off billions of |
| 1:27.5 | pounds. And now creditors are contemplating a restructuring that would possibly impose more losses on |
| 1:34.4 | them. So if you're the new government trying to attract a lot of investment into the country, |
| 1:38.5 | how do you fix Thameswater so that creditors don't point to that and say, well, the UK is uninvestable? |
| 1:45.1 | On today's show, we discuss why the tale of Thameswater has spooked foreign investors |
| 1:49.8 | and what the government needs to do to win them back. |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Bloomberg, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Bloomberg and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.