One of Britain’s top corporate troubleshooters is being lined up to spearhead a multibillion pound rescue of Thames Water after the company’s preferred bidder walked away.
Sky News can reveal that Mike McTighe is working with Thames Water’s largest group of creditors on a plan to restructure the company’s debts and inject new funds in the hope of avoiding nationalisation.
Mr McTighe, whose portfolio of chairmanships includes the Daily Telegraph’s publisher and Openreach, BT Group’s infrastructure arm, is said to have begun meeting stakeholders in recent weeks.
If the Class A creditors’ proposal is successfully executed, Mr McTighe would probably take over as chairman of Thames Water, according to people close to the situation.
Mr McTighe has earned a reputation as a turnaround expert, but also chairs companies such as IG Group, the financial spreadbetting company, and Together Financial Services, the non-bank lender.
The recruitment of such a prominent businessman to lead the lenders’ efforts will add momentum to a plan which increasingly looks like the only alternative to landing British taxpayers with a vast rescue bill.
The group’s proposal would include swapping several billion pounds of Thames Water’s debt for equity, as well as injecting substantial new funding.
Thames Water is Britain’s largest water utility, serving more than 15 million customers.
However, decades of poor performance and financial engineering have left it carrying close to £20bn of debt and facing hundreds of millions of pounds in regulatory fines.
The Class A creditor group, which represents about £13bn of Thames Water’s borrowings, includes some of the world’s most powerful investors.
Elliott Management, the New York-based firm, is among those exposed to a collapse that could leave Thames Water in a special administration regime (SAR) – a government-sponsored insolvency process…
