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Reservoirs Dogged
01 August 2001
UK water companies are in trouble. And, in their view, this is trouble of the regulator's making. Louise Bowman talks to Ken Hill, director of finance at the Pennon Group, South West Water's owner, about how he plans to fund capital investment against a backdrop of OFWAT imposed price cuts.
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Shares in several UK water companies suffered a setback in early
June thanks largely to the restructuring plans ? or rather the
scrapping of them ? of Pennon Group. Ironically, shares in Pennon
Group, owner of South West Water (SWW), have held up well following
its announcement that restructuring would do nothing to solve the
problems of its SWW subsidiary. Shares in two of Pennon's
competitors ? AWG (owner of Anglian Water) and Kelda Group (owner
of Yorkshire Water) ? were, however, hit by the news and its
implications for the structure of the UK's water sector in the
future.
Exeter-based SWW took over the assets of the former South West
Water Authority when the industry was privatized in 1989. When the
water industry was regulated it was split up into 10 regulated
monopolies, responsible for both operations and the maintenance of
infrastructure. SWW is the fifth-largest water utility in the UK.
It has a customer base of...
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