Thames Water has secured a £3 billion loan, ensuring the company can continue to operate into 2025.

The fresh funds are meant to act as “liquidity bridge” to “stabilise the business” and give it time to secure long-term investment, its chief executive, Chris Weston, said on Friday. It will further balloon its operating company’s debt pile, taking it to £17.9bn by March next year, Alastair Cochran, Thames’s chief financial officer, said.

Photo credit: Flavio Vallone

In a signal of shaky market confidence in the company, the new debt is expected to come with double the borrowing costs Thames had previously secured from markets. The company said that the yield on its new debt of about 15% was in line with other transactions “of this nature”.

Covered by the BBC and The Guardian