@SheamusPatt

indeed, but its not an uncommon practice to take on debt to pay dividends - the justification being to smooth out payments across the years.... the reality is that most board members & executive are shareholders & want to see their payments maintained.

@SheamusPatt
I'm trying to find, but failing, an article on this topic which suggests Glazification to describe this - the enshittification of an excellent company (eg Manchester United) to make money for investors who won't need the company to exist in the very near future. My have been a #Bylines article.

@ChrisMayLA6

@SheamusPatt @ChrisMayLA6 Was having a similar conversation about where the "blame" lies for this and I do wonder if there is a role for auditors and accounting standards to spot when borrowing to pay dividends becomes unsustainable. Setting aside Thames Water for the moment, it does seem from large corporate failures of recent years it is a strong indicator if they are borrowing to pay dividends for more than a couple of years and without a particular plan to return to profit and sustainable dividends, that they are headed for disaster! I suspect it doesn't happen as much with fully listed companies. All the ones I'm thinking of (BHS, Wilko, Thomas Cook, Thames Water and co) have been effectively either private or private equity owned.

Also, I think the figures look even worse if you confine your time window to after the McQuarrie/PE takeover of Thames Water. RWE had other ways of extracting value (like keeping the TW international businesses) but weren't so much financial engineering.