Optimally the utilities’ long-term views should result from their local connections.

Sir, Jonathan Ford describes in very clear terms why “private equity firms shouldn’t own regulated utilities, full stop. In very long-term businesses providing essential services, investors should have time horizons to match.” “Why private equity investors and utilities should not mix” June 17.

But there is more to this issue. In 2000, Electricidad de Caracas, EdC, the electrical utility of Caracas, Venezuela, that had been founded and managed by a local family for 105 years, was sold off to a big time international player, AES. I was in shock, and so I wrote in several Op-Eds. 

Not only would we lose the natural accountability of the management that exists when these are your neighbors and suffer the same service failings that you do; but it would also take that company out of the hands of electrical engineers and place it into the hands of financial engineers. 

Yes, the new owners proceeded to sell assets, repurchase shares, take up new loans and pay out dividends, leveraging the company up to the tilt… and many needed investments were delayed.

While EdC was being negotiated I wrote: "From my local electrical distributor, what I'm interested in seeing are good engineers with colorful helmets, accompanied by competent accountants with simple calculators, which only serve to add and subtract. I do not like to observe the presence of lawyers, financiers, brokers, publicists and other professionals little or nothing related to bring me the light home…. I get very scared when I hear terms like ‘unfriendly takeovers’ ‘poison pills’ and ‘golden parachutes’.”

To that I should have added “And I absolutely want my neighbors to hold management control and a clear majority of shares in that company.”

PS. The EdC story had an even sadder ending. In 2007, after trying to negotiate tariffs with a loony government, AES withdrew. Unfortunately, the Local that stood up to forcibly repurchase it, was Pdvsa… and you probably know what happens to anything that is in the hands of the current Pdvsa.

@PerKurowski

How would I privatize a public service? Always making sure that who owns and manages it, are neighbors I can hold accountable.

Sir, I refer to Martin Wolf’s discussion on the subject of privatized or not public services. “Nationalisation is the wrong answer to a real question” December 12.

I was a very active participant, wearing many different hats, in many of the privatizations that took place in my Venezuela, during its privatization influenza.

Like Wolf I much favour the private over the public sector managing these services but, looking back, the number one requirement I would make when privatizing, would be to require the private owners of any such privatized public services, to live within the community, and have their affiliation to the public service transparently identified all the time. Like being able to call over the fence: “Hey Bill, what happened last night when the lights went out”, “Hey Bill, can’t you find a way to stop it from being so expensive?”

I felt in the air the immediate difference between a private electrical services company held by a family living in Caracas, who wanted to make profits but also to be seen as good public servants, and that same company when it passed into the hands of absentee owners.

It was day and night! The new investors loaded up the old conservative run company with debt, took most of their skin out of the game paying themselves huge dividends and other services, and left the poor users having to serve that debt.

Of course, then came Hugo Chávez and put it all in the hands of the government, and so it went from a bit bad to plain horrible.

PS. But also, any privatization should be done in terms of who offers the lowest rates, not, as it too often has been, about who offers the government the most money upfront.

@PerKurowski