It's so wild to me that anyone thought this would be successful.
Perhaps this shows my ignorance of business and the stock market works, but water utilities are a service with a fixed set of customers, so there is neither a pressure to be good (because you can't gain customers from your competition so why bother) or a deterrent against being bad (because you have no competition so why bother).
So the only way to make line go up is to do your job worse (to save costs), overcharge customers (to bring more money in) and do random dodgy accounting (to bring even more money in). Was the argument that they would save costs by doing it more efficiently? Why, when they have a captive customer base with no ability to lose or gain customers, would they bother with that!?
Perhaps this shows my ignorance of business and the stock market works, but water utilities are a service with a fixed set of customers, so there is neither a pressure to be good (because you can't gain customers from your competition so why bother) or a deterrent against being bad (because you have no competition so why bother).
So the only way to make line go up is to do your job worse (to save costs), overcharge customers (to bring more money in) and do random dodgy accounting (to bring even more money in). Was the argument that they would save costs by doing it more efficiently? Why, when they have a captive customer base with no ability to lose or gain customers, would they bother with that!?
Just mad.