England’s privatised water system is owned by funds, banks and billionaires across the world, as this country-by-country breakdown shows

• Revealed: more than 70% of English water industry is in foreign ownership
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• England’s water: is privatised model a fair system?
• England’s water firms respond to investigation into role of global investor

England is one of the few countries in the world where water is fully owned by private companies. These companies answer to investors based thousands of miles away from their customers.

“What we have here is just a crazy system,” said Kate Bayliss, from the department of economics at SOAS University of London and author of several papers on England’s privatised water. “We are managing our water in the interests of offshore investors.”

These offshore investors include private and state-owned international funds, banks, multinationals and billionaires headquartered outside the UK, and they control at least 72% of English water, new Guardian research has found.