Elliott, unlike Thames Water’s board, sees the inevitability of debt writedowns

Second, it indicates that the threat of special administration for Thames, aka temporary nationalisation, is concentrating minds. One can think that the likes of Elliott have worked out that a voluntary debt-for-equity swap would yield a better outcome for bondholders than an untested process in which a government-appointed administrator runs up a pile of expenses as a preferred creditor and then imposes a financial solution on everybody else.