Businesses are run to make a profit. Really? Sad but true.
So, when Blessed Margaret decided to privatise the nationalised industries, she expected them to make a profit. Well they did. And then some.
But to make sure that these profits were not excessive (stop laughing), there were regulators – all very nice genteel people, many of them with a public service background, and a few washed-up old business types who were on the lookout for Non-Executive Directorships (NEDs) to eke out their pensions.
Mrs T thought that once people bought shares, they would hang onto them and the UK would become like the USA where almost two-thirds of people own shares and play the stock market. In the UK, it’s half that.
Not on your NEDdy. The shares were sold cheap and British people having gone through Black Monday (when shares went through the floor) took their profits and ran.
Hovering over all this were the private equity vultures who swooped in and bought up companies like the water utilities. And started milking them for all they were worth.
Macquarie the Australian bank were in faster than you can say ‘out’ (sorry if you can’t understand cricket but you know what happened last week) and made an absolute killing.
And how about the regulators?
Well, the CEO of Ofwat is paid around £150,000 a year and no doubt he’s worth every penny.
But that’s peanuts compared to the £1.5 million (plus add-ons) earned by the former CEO of Thames Water Sarah Bentley – who always looks sooooo fetching in her hi-vis gear, I didn’t even know Armani made those. I’m not saying that pay reflects talent, but there must be some correlation.
What the poor CEO of Ofwat gets paid is peanuts. Speaking of which, I see that Thames Water got fined £3.5 million for a sewage spill earlier by Ofwat. A couple for months’ salary for Ms Bentley. Peanuts indeed.
Have a good week
Tom
by the Planning PR guru 