In my opinion they should be declared bankrupt and taken over by the government at pretty much zero cost
Yeah point is what they should and what they do are two different things. I do agree with you tough, or better said i think they should have kept the hardware(water infrastructure) in government hands to begin with making the water companies lease the infrastructure so that there is from the beginning much less of an incentive for crazy investments based on nothing but air, and investor ''value'' it should just be kept simple and stupid basically.
NOT WE DON'T
the investors are pension COMPANIES - although one owns 30% or something - it is a small part of the company's total investment and they will have massive backup and spreading of risk
we are NOT taking away the bread and milk from a little old lady in a 2-up-2-down in Coronation Street
That and pension companies are said companies because they are supposed to specialize and spreading risk, the alternative is not using an pension company and just put the money on a interest paying(savings) account on the bank. However that brings a much less revenue, so the strategy of a pensions company is a good spread over multiple different sectors type of companies etc. so that in the long term the short term losses are nulled by the income.
and a lot of the shareholders are, in reality, very rich people who are looking to minimise their losses - and if possible drag a profit from it - after making money from it form many years at the expense of the customers
To take an example of the cycling branche as we are on a cycling forum afterall, the fact that rich people always seem to think they are entitled to compensation stings a bit, especially since out of millions of Ebikes sold right now, almost none of them are compactible, even within the same brand. So we as normal people are expected to burn if our investment is rendered useless if for example the eletrical motor of a ebike fails and only and full replacement if offered. (yes i known we have facebook marketplace, aliexrpess and such, but i'm talking about official offerings, bosch and all the other ebike engine companies only sell complete units not parts.)
So if we don't get to negate our losses, why should those with millions to play around get that option? They should not and that should learn them to be more carefull with their money and lives. If some of those realized that earlier we might not have had a strange attempt of claiming to be as sub-marine crash.
can't see it being done the way I think with this government!
Agreed, now to be completely honest i have little trust any government would come with an better plan
The "poor pensioners" pensions will not be affected. YOUR pension might be, (depending on how your Pension Scheme is funded), if you are not already in receipt of your pension.
He is correctly pointing out it are pension companies investing, depending on their strategy there is very little change they would not be able to pay-out because of one investment not giving expected returns.