Yorkshire Water receives fresh funding despite sewage fines and pay row
Private equity group EQT to take 42% stake as supplier faces scrutiny over environmental record and CEO’s pay
A leading European investor will pump fresh funding into Yorkshire Water including helping to cover a £600m loan, despite recent heavy sewage fines and a scandal over executive pay at the utility company.
EQT, a Swedish private equity group, said on Monday it would take a 42% stake in Kelda Holdings, the Jersey-registered parent company of Yorkshire Water, which has 5.7 million customers across Yorkshire and parts of the East Midlands and Lincolnshire.
The move will effectively make it Yorkshire Water’s joint owner, bringing the stake of an existing shareholder, GIC, an investment firm, to 42%, and TCorp, the investment vehicle of Australia’s New South Wales public sector, to 16%.
EQT said part of the deal would involve contributing to a £600m “inter-company loan repayment” that is due before March 2027, while it was “fully supportive” of spending plans to clean up Yorkshire’s record on sewage spills.
The buyout group is already invested in four British plants that burn household and commercial rubbish to generate electricity, via a stake in the energy-from-waste company Encyclis, and water treatment operations spanning the US, Caribbean and Latin America, according to its website.
The deal comes as Yorkshire Water faces mounting scrutiny over its environmental record and executive pay. It was given a £700,000 fine last month for releasing sewage repeatedly into a stream.
A succession of sewage pollution incidents in Pools Brook country park near Chesterfield from 2018 killed fish and insects and polluted the stream for more than half a mile, the Environment Agency found in February.
Last year the Guardian revealed that Nicola Shaw, its chief executive, had received £1.3m in previously undisclosed extra pay since 2023 via the offshore parent company. Shaw was given £660,000 from Kelda in the 2023-24 and the 2024-25 financial years, and the size of the fees were not disclosed in Yorkshire’s annual report.
That led to a government decision to close loopholes that allow water company bosses to continue receiving large bonuses despite a ban passed last year.
Bosses of companies that illegally dumped sewage into England’s rivers and seas, including Yorkshire’s Shaw, had been paid millions in bonuses despite the ban. MPs have said the loopholes allowed companies to get around the bonus ban by labelling payments differently or paying bosses through linked companies.
The sewage scandal has returned to the spotlight in recent weeks after the Channel 4 drama Dirty Business told the story of how private companies have been allowed to pollute Britain’s rivers and waterways.
Among the most high-profile offenders has been Thames Water, which was ranked the worst water supplier by the Environment Agency last year, while the wider industry’s ratings also hit rock bottom amid record levels of sewage pollution.
Thames is locked in talks with its lenders in an attempt to stave off financial collapse, which would lead to the troubled water company coming under government control via a temporary nationalisation.
Last year the government said it would replace the powers of Ofwat, the Environment Agency and the Drinking Water Inspectorate in an effort to “reset” the scandal-hit sector, after a review by former Bank of England deputy Sir Jon Cunliffe. A transition report will outline the next steps for carrying that out, officials said in January.
Yorkshire Water has been the subject of attempts by shareholders to sell their stakes in recent years, and analysts at Royal Bank of Canada wrote that the new funding was “a positive signal” for the sector amid the regulatory shake-up.
On Monday, Shaw described the new investment as “a great step forward”. She added: “The EQT team will bring additional expertise to our board, and their backing is a strong vote of confidence in our plan to improve performance and the progress we have made so far.
“EQT has a long-term perspective and their team is committed to supporting the delivery of our £8.3bn investment programme.”
The company plans to increase average annual water bills by 6% to £636 from next month.
Funds controlled by DWS, the asset manager majority owned by Deutsche Bank, and Corsair, a US private equity group, previously held a combined 54% of the company, while GIC and TCorp’s holdings have risen from 34% and 13% respectively.
Kunal Koya, a partner at EQT Infrastructure, said the company was “a responsible private capital manager” and it could help in “modernising” the water sector.