Thames Water needs to clean up its act after yet more fines | Nils Pratley

Nationalisation would be a costly way to fix the industry - the regulator should push a lot harder on behalf of customers

Thames Water is the company that gives even doubters cause to wonder whether renationalisation of the water industry might be a good idea.

Ownership of the operating business, and the finer details of the colossal 10.75bn of debt financing, is contained within a labyrinth of intermediary offshore companies that makes it impossible to calculate how much the owners have made over the years. All one can reasonably observe is that even insiders concede Australian financial outfit Macquarie made a packet in the period before it sold its final stake this year.