Turkey of the week: ditch this overpriced water company

The boom in asset-backed deals by the private-equity industry has pushed the share prices of many utilities far beyond their profit expectations.

The boom in asset-backed deals by the private-equity industry has pushed the share prices of many utilities far beyond their profit expectations. Take this water company. Its shares, and those of its peers, have been buoyed by takeover fever; in the past year alone, both AWG and Thames Water have been bought out.

Severn Trent (SVT), rated a BUY by Evolution Securities

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Paul gained a degree in electrical engineering and went on to qualify as a chartered management accountant. He has extensive corporate finance and investment experience and is a member of the Securities Institute.

Over the past 16 years Paul has held top-level financial management and M&A roles for blue-chip companies such as O2, GKN and Unilever. He is now director of his own capital investment and consultancy firm, PMH Capital Limited.

Paul is an expert at analysing companies in new, fast-growing markets, and is an extremely shrewd stock-picker.