The water company, which has said it could run out of cash by next June, had asked the regulator for permission to charge customers £156.6m through bills to plug the pension shortfall.
IIRC, since privatisation the total amount of water company debt is roughly equivalent to the total amount paid out in shareholder dividends in the same timeframe
Well, bit of good news for you there – included in Labour's Kings Speech was a bill to make CEOs of water companies individually criminally liable in egregious cases of sewage pollution etc.