Thames Water poaches Severn Trent's Bentley for CEO role

Thames Water confirmed it had had appointed Sarah Bentley as chief executive officer, starting this autumn.

The UK's biggest water utility lured Bentley across from rival Severn Trent where she was chief customer officer responsible for customer retail and network operations, group technology and transformation.

The search CEO started after Steve Robertson was ousted last May amid mounting shareholder worries about the company's performance.

Thames is owned by a consortium of pension funds and state-backed investors. The company, which has 15m customers, was taken over by Australia's Macquarie in 2006 in an £8bn deal.

Macquarie then sold off a series of stakes before exiting completely in 2017. The company is now owned by Canadian pension fund Omers, the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) and funds from Abu Dhabi, Australia, Canada, China and the Netherlands.