David Bennett

There is a movement in the UK nowadays to expose the slave-owning history of prominent people and businesses and institutions that sent slaves to the Americas. What is not acknowledged is the similar or greater slave-owning history that sent slaves not west, but east.

Slavery from Sub-Saharan Africa goes back millennia. Until the start of the Arab/Islamic slave trade in the 7th century of the Common Era it was localised and slaves were typically captives in war, criminals, or those in debt.

As Islam expanded in the 7th century, Arab traders began trafficking Africans north across the Sahara, and eastwards.

Slaves transported eastward were brought from the interior of Africa (especially Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Congo), and trafficked over the Indian Ocean to the Middle East, India, Persia, Indonesia, and China, and in large numbers.

The transatlantic Slave Trade ran for a much shorter period, from the 15th to the 19th century. The Portuguese began it, and it was later dominated by British, French, Dutch, and Spanish traders. Over 12 million Africans were captured through raids, wars, or sold by other Africans and forcibly taken across the Atlantic Ocean to the Americas from major slave-trading ports in Ghana, Benin, Nigeria, and Angola.

The estimates of slaves transported sent eastwards ranges from 10–18 million people.

The wide range reflects that fact that many of the Arab-led slave trades had no documentation, unlike the Transatlantic slave trade run by Europeans who kept detailed shipping records.

The wide range of estimates of the eastern trade also reflects the centuries-long time scale over which the trade occurred.

And a third reason is the lack of will to describe it, unlike the analyses in the West, beginning after the abolition of slavery.

All in all though, and this is a surprise to some, the eastward slave trade was the equal to and likely more in numbers of slaves than the Transatlantic trade.

The story of Franz Kafka’s The Trial follows Josef K, a bank clerk, who is arrested by unidentified agents. He is neither detained nor told what crime he has allegedly committed. He is entangled in a labyrinthine legal system, with arbitrary rules, faceless bureaucrats, and unsettling and surreal proceedings. In the end he is executed in a quarry.

Is the novel a metaphor for the kind of existential anxiety and search for meaning we feel in an incomprehensible universe.

Or maybe the meaning is staring us in the face but we do not grasp it, with each of us seeing everything as a game of ‘what does it profit me?’

The opposite of that would be to care for the other, to want to give the other that which raises them to deeper sensations of existence.

Better than that would be for everyone to know that everyone cares for them, has their back. Ah, if that was the case I could relax. We could all relax and begin to live.

But in this world of what does it profit me, what is worse than Kafka’s trial? What can be worse?

Well, there is one sense in which Kafka’s character could derive some meaning from his situation. That is that he is accused. To be accused it to be recognised.

Josef K’s ‘crime’ may be obscure and even nonsensical, but at least he is regarded and recognised by others. He is someone in the scheme of things.

What is worse than that is to simply not be recognised at all. You do not exist. The machine grinds on and you do not figure in the process. You are not a non-person scrabbling for a purchase, a hold on the outer surface of something that is smooth without holes or entrances or edges to grip.

Try as you might, it rejects what you want to achieve, which is to make contact with, to connect with other human beings.

Thames Water is privately owned by a consortium of institutional investors – primarily pension funds and sovereign wealth funds. About 80% is owned by

• The Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, a Canadian pension fund that holds around 32% of Thames Water’s shares.
• Universities Superannuation Scheme – a UK pension scheme for university staff that holds around 20% of Thames Water’s shares.
• Infinity Investments, which is a subsidiary of the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, that holds around 10% of Thames Water’s shares.
• British Columbia Investment Management Corporation, a Canadian investment manager that holds around 9% of Thames Water’s shares.
• China Investment Corporation, a sovereign wealth fund from China that holds around 9% of Thames Water’s shares.

There are also bond holders, who have lent money to the company. The publicly available information on Thames Water’s creditors is that its class A bondholders, hold about £12bn in debt and include Abrdn, Apollo Global Management, and Elliott Investment Management. Their status as class A debt holders comes from the terms of the £3bn loan approved by the Court on 17 February.

While Thames Water is privately owned, it is a regulated utility company with specific licensing requirements and a special administration regime in place. The Water Services Regulation Authority, or Ofwat, is the body responsible for the economic regulation of the privatised water and sewerage industry in England and Wales.

Ofwat grants Thames Water the legal right to operate, sets price limits, monitors performance to check whether Thames Water is meeting standards for water quality, customer service, and infrastructure. If Thames Water fails to meet these license requirements, Ofwat can take action, including fines or even revoking the license.

Beyond that, as a supplier of essential services, Thames Water is subject to what is called a Special Administration Regime. If the company is in serious trouble, the government can step in and appoint special administrators.

All of which raises the question of the possible consequences that the law allows if Ofwat was to revoke Thames Water’s licence and the government stepped in and appointed special administrators? Specifically, what rights if any would the investors and bondholders have?

First, Ofwat has never revoked a water company’s license. If it were to decide to do so it would have to cite repeated breaches of environmental regulations such as massive sewage spills. These have already occurred with record fines.

The £3 billion restructuring plan in the form of new bonds to that value gives the bondholders what is called super-senior status, but only applies to the new bonds approved by the High Court. The money comes in two tranches, half now and the rest through to 2026. The effect is to give liquidity to Thames Water, but a point will come when the bond holders will either be content to roll over their bonds or they will want their money.

So why did the bondholders agree to lend more money? Part of the reason is the whopping 9.75% interest rate on the bonds and the fact that they have a short maturity period of two and a half years.

So watch this space, or more particularly watch January 2027 when those bonds mature.

How could it play out? A lot depends on Thames Water’s environmental record going forward. With huge financial pressure the temptation to cut corners will be all the greater. And then there are still the bonds that were issued before the latest issue. Some of those will be coming up, I assume. And what of the investors? What of the Ontario Municipal Employees and what of the UK university staff who might want to have a say in whether the funds divest and whether they divest now or further down the line.

Update June 2025: Ofwat Grows Teeth

Well, that didn’t take long. Things moved on after the agreement in February, and in June bondholders and private investors proposed a broader £5 billion package made up of £3 billion in cash, £2 billion in new loans and a 20% debt write-off. They also set conditions on environmental compliance and restructuring oversight. What that meant was that the bondholders wanted the water regulator Ofwat to back off and be lenient about the sewage spills.

It was not to be. Ofwat levied a £123 million fine on Thames Water for discharging sewage and for infractions in issuing dividends and bonuses given the environmental record.

The big deal about the fine was that it was to be borne by the shareholders and not customers. And Ofwat asked for new laws making the executive personally liable for environmental breaches.

Currently, £1.5 billion of the bond approved by the court has been drawn. And the £2 billion loan is still being reviewed. The only question is how far Thames Water is from collapse.