But an £8bn bid from Qatar would make the sale option more likely.The Qatari government sees the UK as a stable, long-term environment in which to invest, particularly compared to the Middle East. It also wants to make up ground on neighbouring Dubai, where investors have become serial buyers of Western assets.. A record number of hedge funds are being liquidated and the rate of start-ups has slowed dramatically, according to new research. A team of 30 investment bankers has been working on the offer over the summer. Competition rules make it difficult to own more than one water company, and so to avoid any competition issues, Macquarie sold its existing water company, South East Water, for £665m to funds owned by fellow Australian bank Westpac last week. But the Qatar-led consortium still remains favourite to land Thames Water.RWE, which is being advised by Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs, could decide to float Thames instead of going ahead with a straight sale. The German parent has been conducting a "dual-track process" and will decide at the end of this month whether it will raise more money through an IPO or a sale.
Ofwat regulator Philip Fletcher has also insisted that Thames' debt must remain at investment grade. This would make a highly leveraged acquisition, which private equity firms such as Terra Firma specialise in, harder to pull off.Macquarie remains keen on Thames, but it is not clear if it is prepared to match Qatar's planned bid. But Terra Firma's interest is thought to have cooled in the face of Qatar's financial muscle. Final-round bids are due on Saturday.Two other bidders - consortia led by Guy Hands's private equity firm Terra Firma and Australian bank Macquarie - remain in the fray. This is £1bn more than the value other bidders originally gave the UK's most valuable water company, which is being sold by German owner RWE. An £8bn bid by Qatar, which has teamed up with the investment bank UBS, would be hard to beat.
Simultaneously."The current rules were drawn up in 2000 after leaks and tip-offs during the dot-com boom meant some shareholders heard about price-moving company news ahead of others. As in foreign financial centres, such as London, the stock market rules insist companies reveal news to all shareholders at the same time.But an SEC spokesman conceded it was only by convention that companies use formal press releases and investor conference calls. "The rule doesn't preclude, indeed it envisages, that disclosure media may change over time," he said.The pony-tailed Mr Schwartz is one of 4,000 Sun employees whose blogs appear on the corporate website. Readers can "subscribe" to specific blogs by use of RSS technology, which emails them when a new posting is made.. A consortium led by Qatar's state investment fund is preparing a knockout bid for Thames Water worth as much as £8bn. As for his leopard-skin shoes, they are not so much a fashion statement as an item of traditional Sudanese dress What's more, most pairs come from Darfur..
