Speeches by Bool.

“T3. One of the main benefits of saving into a private pension is the tax relief that people get from the Government, which is one of the smartest ways to save for later life. Any move by this Government to cut pension tax relief will devastate savings rates and the adequacy of pension provisions. I would hope that the …”

“Okay. Just very quickly on that point: obviously as part of the due diligence, KKR would have been asking Thames Water a lot of questions to seek that comfort. Clearly, you could not give KKR the comfort to be able to get that financial investment sign-off. Obviously I understand about the banks. Chris, I know you said…”

“I will leave it there because I will come back to that a bit later.”

“But either way, you were aware of KKR pulling out, but simultaneously, it put a bid in, we think.”

“Just to be clear, in the vein of transparency, I want to look again at these other bidders’ offers. Obviously, you say that the proposals from KKR and Castle Water were not progressable, but I want to understand what it was that was not progressable.”

“Where did those mainly fail? Which of those issues were the problem because I am sure the regulators might have been on side. I understand the future investment. Where was the weakness on the others? If KKR could, why could others not?”

“Is that because they were not allowed to due to the exclusivity?”

“Well, investment committee, but that is serious, and I do not think that is just politics alone, if I am being honest.”

“I have a very quick question. I understand your explanation about the penalties and the doom loop, but did the KKR bid include paying those penalties and have the creditors built in paying these penalties as part of their bid?”

“They want the reset, so it was possibly always going to fail. Either way, they are going to unless you can get that.”

“But the creditors were also operating and preparing their own bid alongside KKR. Equally, to have the information that KKR needed, it would have had to speak to the creditors to get the confirmation. So it is like marking its own homework for a bid that then comes out.”

“But the creditors are actually given that information because of the loan structure and funding. There could be questions raised about the comfort that KKR could not get because the creditors ultimately wanted the bid.”

“Just to understand, you say it does not have operational capacity in water, but CKI owns 75% of Northumbrian Water. What do you mean by that compared to the creditors?”

“I find this very difficult because it is incredibly serious to get to this stage after 10 weeks—”

“—and then not be able to get your finances over the board. That is very unusual in this day and age.”

“You said that KKR shared information, so what information was shared? Was it ultimately its DD reports?”

“So it was quite happy with that being shared?”

“How comparable is the bid now between what the creditors are now offering and what KKR were?”

“It almost does not feel like there is an open competition. I appreciate that the creditors have always been waiting in the wings; they have been working basically in parallel with KKR. On the other hand, Sir Adrian, you said that the creditors have contractual control over the company at the moment. I still do not thin…”

“It would have been an exclusivity agreement signed thing.”