Barbarians are at the gates of the sewage works - Thames workers and customers beware

The answer to too much private equity ownership at Thames Water, it turns out, is more private equity ownership.

- Nils Pratley

Say hello to KKR, the preferred bidder for the UK's biggest water company. If you remember them as the original "barbarians at the gate", the US private equity firm would probably point out that the reference to a leveraged buyout of a US biscuit company is more than 35 years old. These days, the relevant unit of KKR would like to be known as an infrastructure investor, which has a rather cuddlier ring.

On day one as official frontrunner, however, KKR saw no need to inform Thames's 16 million captive customers of its thinking about the business. True, the plan to take control by investing £4bn in equity isn't finalised, but you'd still expect a wannabe new owner to offer a few words of comfort at this stage, if only to put some distance between itself and Macquarie, the Australian private equiteers of 2006-17 vintage who wrecked the balance sheet in the first place.