Page 10 of their 24/25 annual report says they only pay 8% toward interest payments, the largest outgoing is infrastructure, then opex.

https://www.thameswater.co.uk/media-library/l13deqmw/thames-...

In the last 10 years, they did £18107.3m turnover, and cumulative -1180.3m loss.

Poor shareholders, mainly Ontario Municipal retirement fund pensioners, who are the biggest ones (32%) and retired British academics (20%).

That doesn’t answer the question.

However, any money paid to shareholders while accumulating debt, including deferred maintenance, etc was financial smoke and mirrors not actual profit.

Does the government not do this?

Unless you're trying to ask "is the level of corruption in government nonzero", the answer is unequivocally no because the government doesn't have shareholders.

yes, paying dividends out of debt is completely illegal

but apparently not if you wrap it in half a dozen companies in various tax havens

(that have no legitimate purpose other than various types of laundering)

I'm not a financial wiz, but it seems like they are playing games here, as a huge chunk of their stated losses for the year is some sort of loan write-off against their parent company.

> £1,271 million of expected credit loss provision recognised against the intercompany loan receivable from TWUL’s immediate parent company, Thames Water Utilities Holdings Limited. This balance is fully provided for, as it is not deemed recoverable

It blows my mind that this is legal in any developed nation. The whole PE playbook seems like embezzlement carried out in broad daylight.

That's because it is!

And yet they have paid dividends until last year and the regulator has now banned them from doing so without approval and fined them, too.

They are a scam operation, frankly.