From The Guardian:
England's privatised water firms paid £57bn in dividends since 1991
In the past 10 years, the companies have paid out £17bn in dividends and directors’ pay has soared... According to the analysis by David Hall and Karol Yearwood of the public services international research unit of Greenwich University, the nine privatised companies in England have amassed debts of £48bn over the past three decades – almost as much as the sum paid out to shareholders. The debt cost them £1.3bn in interest last year.
As outrageous as the directors' salaries are, they are robbing their shareholders and not the customer. Whether it's dividends or interest doesn't really matter, it's a legal rather than economic distinction in the context of a utility company with a 100% captive customer base, steady income and known costs. And as far as I am aware, most of the interest payments goes to the parent company, they do it to save a bit of tax.
Dividends and interest work out at about £55 per person per year, assuming 2 people per household and an average water bill of £500 a year, the dividends and interest are over 20% of your water bill.
In relative terms, compared to competitive businesses, this is a staggering amount. For example, Tesco has sales of just under £7 per share and paid dividends of 9p per share (from here) i.e. it paid out just over 1% of its sales in dividends.
But in absolute terms, £1 a week per person is not a lot of money. A sensible government would just impose a lower price cap (£450 instead of £500) while imposing the same standards and costs, so that the owners can only collect £5 from each customer in dividends and interest.
The Neo-liberals will argue that the £55 per person "tax" is worth paying, because bills are lower (or quality and reliability better) than they would have been if water was still nationalised. In other words, foreigners (who own a large chunk of English water companies) are better at running our country than we are. This might or might not be true (I suspect it isn't) but it's difficult to make a fair comparison.
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