Paul Singer’s Elliott Investment Management is closing in on one of the biggest prizes in British utilities: a role in deciding the future of Thames Water, the UK’s largest water company. The creditor-led consortium trying to take over the business would put Singer’s firm among the people controlling the water supply of 16 million people in London and the Thames valley if the rescue goes through.
The stakes are sharpened by the politics around Singer himself. In 2024, the Elliott founder and co-chief executive donated $5m to Make America Great Again Inc and gave tens of millions more to Donald Trump’s allies, including $37m to support the election of Republicans to Congress. His son Gordon, who runs Elliott’s London office and is the point person on Thames Water, also tried to donate nearly £2,000 to Robert Jenrick’s failed bid for the Conservative leadership, a payment that was returned and judged impermissible by the Electoral Commission.
Thames Water has built up a £17.6bn debt pile since privatisation, and the rescue process has become a fight over who bears the cost of keeping the company afloat. Thames Water, ministers and creditors are at an impasse over a deal, while the consortium, known as London & Valley Water, is trying to impose a multibillion-pound restructuring that would leave Elliott alongside Silver Point Capital, BlackRock and M&G in the driving seat.
That consortium has already offered Thames a £3bn loan at an annual interest rate of up to 9.75%, with the repayment expected to be funded through customer bills. It is also asking for the company to be let off fines for four years and for leniency on environmental measures, including pollution, leakage and other performance targets imposed a year ago. Critics say that would amount to a rescue plan that protects investors while giving the company room to keep polluting.
The political sensitivity is obvious. Cat Hobbs, a campaigner, said: “Trump wants control over NHS drug prices, and his mega donor Singer wants control over our water. ‘Absolutely not’ should be the answer of any government that considers itself patriotic.”
The comparison will not be lost on ministers because Elliott has already shown it can profit from distressed assets far beyond Britain. Two months before Trump arrested Venezuela’s president, Nicolás Maduro, Elliott was part of a consortium that secured a winning bid for Citgo, the US-based subsidiary of Venezuela’s state-owned oil company, for $8.8bn in a sale forced by a Delaware court and widely reported as being at a steep discount from the Venezuelan government’s $18bn valuation.
For Thames Water, the question is no longer whether its debts are severe; they are. The issue is whether the government will accept a rescue that hands influence over a company serving 16 million people to creditors whose returns for Singer average 14%, while softening the penalties and environmental obligations designed to stop the business from running itself into the same crisis again.
