THE new owners of Thames Water have announced the appointment of a new chairman and chief executive once the company's multibillion-pound deal is completed.
Chairman Jim Forbes and chief executive Jeremy Pelczer will be replaced by Sir Peter Mason, former head of engineering firm Amec, and David Owens, who used to work for Eastern Electricity and London Electricity.
Neither Thames Water nor its new owner, Australian investment fund Macquarie, would comment on the pay-offs of the current executives.
But the GMB union said it believed the two men, and another executive, would share a £2m payout.
Union official Kelly Rogers said: "This at a time when customers are facing drought orders and workers' jobs are being cut. It is greed personified and this money comes from the pockets of their long-suffering customers.
"(The Chancellor) Gordon Brown should have converted the equity to public sector debt rather than allowing it to be converted to private sector debt and that way prevented the looting that that entails."
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