NORTHUMBRIAN Water has reversed the trend for water companies to turn their backs on the UK stock market by completing the largest flotation in London this year.

The water group, which supplies water to 4.3 million customers in the North East, Essex and Suffolk and owns the Kielder reservoir in Northumberland, the largest man-made lake in Europe, listed on the Alternative Investment Market yesterday after an eight-year absence.

John Cuthbert, Northumbrian Water’s managing director, said: “It is all too often that water companies are taken private and we are now reversing that trend.”

After privatisation in the early 1990s there were ten big regional water companies listed in London, but that number had halved before Northumbrian’s return. Water companies have increasingly been sold to foreign firms or financial buyers, which have leveraged the companies’ assets. Southern Water was sold to RBS but a sell-on to Vivendi was blocked by the Department of Trade and Industry.

Wessex was sold toYTL, a Malaysian conglomerate, although the sale triggered a police investigation into “consultancy fees” received by Collin Skellett, the managing director, who was later cleared of any wrongdoing.

Welsh Water was the subject of a bidding battle between WPD, the US energy group, and Nomura’s principal finance group, led at the time by Guy Hands. Mr Hands lost out and WPD sold on Welsh Water to Glas Cymru, a not-for-profit company.

Thames Water, one of the UK’s most successful water companies, was sold to the German utility RWE after it was thwarted in its attempts to buy other UK water firms.