Diving in Key players in finger-pointing standoff over future of troubled utility

The standoff between Thames Water, its shareholders, the government and the industry regulator is beginning to resemble the final scene of Reservoir Dogs.

- Alex Lawson, Anna Isaac

As Britain's biggest water supplier creaks, the finger-pointing over its financial woes is under way.

Its executives and shareholders believe the regulator, Ofwat, has been too stringent, making the company "uninvestible".

Regulators have not caved in to Thames's claims that it needs to raise customer bills, pay out dividends and receive lower environmental fines to survive.

Options include persuading new and existing investors to stump up more funds; a governmenthandled administration; or a debt for equity swap. Yesterday, its parent company, Kemble, asked its creditors to take no action after it missed an interest payment, defaulting on its debt.

Meanwhile, there are concerns auditors may be unable to sign off the company's accounts. Alongside an army of corporate advisers (who may prove to be the big winners) and civil servants, a motley cast of characters are butting heads. Here are the key figures:

Thames executives 

In the (very murky) blue corner, are the Thames top team. It is chaired by Sir Adrian Montague, a City veteran parachuted in last summer. Perhaps his most relevant experience was overseeing the creation of Network Rail, as deputy chair, as the ashes smouldered on its predecessor Railtrack's politically fraught administration.

The spectre of that situation looms large, and sources said Montague's experience preparing the ground for the now Ofwat chair, Iain Coucher's time running Network Rail pointed to more convivial relations between Thames and the regulator than was immediately evident.