Thames Water’s chief financial officer has quit his £1.3m-a-year job, the cash-strapped water company has announced.
Alastair Cochran, who had also recently served as interim chief executive at Thames, will leave his role within days. His departure comes at a critical time for the UK’s largest water company amid close scrutiny of its fragile finances.
It is now staving off insolvency after agreeing to take on billions more debt from its creditors after a court ruling earlier this month, as it seeks to secure fresh equity funding for its operations by the end of June.
Industry sources said it may prove even more challenging for the company to manage its operations and due diligence requirements for potential bidders without an experienced chief financial officer in place.
Thames said that Stuart Thom, director of group finance, would serve as interim CFO “while longer term arrangements are put in place”.
The company, which serves 16 million customers in London and the Thames Valley, would have gone into insolvency and risked temporary nationalisation had it not secured the fresh debt funding of £3bn, which took its total debts to more than £20bn. If it had collapsed at the end of this month it would have had just £39m left, according to court documents.
Thames Water said in a statement that Cochran would step down from the board of the company as well as his executive post by this coming Monday, 31 March. It added that his replacement would be appointed “in due course”.
Cochran’s pay packet faced criticism along with those of other senior water executives, amid public anger over the state of England’s water. His basic salary in 2024 was £450,000 plus a bonus of £446,000 and other benefits, which took his total annual earnings to £1.3m.
Sir Adrian Montague, the Thames chair, said Cochran had “led the work to put TWUL’s [Thames Water Utility Ltd] finances on a more stable footing, overseeing the first stages of our equity raise and financial restructuring, laying the foundations for the wholesale recapitalisation of the business”.
Cochran joined Thames in 2021, and served as co-interim chief executive between June 2023 and January 2024 before resuming the role of chief financial officer. Before joining the water company he was chief financial officer of the oil multinational Petrofac.
Last year, the Guardian reported internal criticisms of Cochran’s time at Thames, which included allegations by current and former staff that he had slowed down time-critical decisions for the water company’s operations in areas such as ordering chemicals and hiring decisions. The company pushed back on these allegations, saying that Cochran only formally signed off on sums over £10m.
Thames is reviewing six approaches from potential suitors including CK Infrastructure Holdings, Castle Water and the private equity group KKR. The majority of bidders are seeking reassurance that they would be able to avoid or manage future fines and punishments for poor performance.
The Guardian also revealed earlier this month that Thames had asked the water regulator, Ofwat, to delay referring its decision on what bill rises the company was allowed to impose on consumers to the Competition and Markets Authority. It also requested special treatment on fines and other regulatory oversight.
Ofwat agreed to Thames’s request to delay the referral after concerns emerged that waiting for the CMA decision could add months of uncertainty for investors trying to get a clear sense of Thames’s financial position.
