I helped privatise UK water firms. But it's government inaction that wrecked them

As bankers in the 80s and 90s, we created safe, stock-market-listed companies. Then private equity moved in, but despite many warnings, Whitehall did nothingAs the chair of the Chichester Harbour Trust, one of the most beautiful and important natural harbours in the UK, I witness on a daily basis its now-rapid destruction, caused in large part by an extraordinary deterioration in water quality - thanks largely, in our case, to Southern Water.I was involved - as a banker in the 1980s and 1990s working for Kleinwort Benson and Lazard - with the privatisation of many of the utilities. In the case of the water companies, most of them were privatised as sensibly capitalised plcs. As local monopolies, they were regulated by Ofwat with a view to protecting customers from monopolistic pricing behaviour. Continue reading...