Boss of collapsed Bulb Energy criticised for £250,000 salary funded by taxpayers

theguardian.com:

The boss of collapsed company Bulb Energy has been criticised for continuing to draw a £250,000 salary, funded by UK taxpayers.

Once the seventh-biggest energy supplier, Bulb was effectively nationalised in November 2021 after collapsing amid the surge in global energy prices. That left the taxpayer with a potential bill of up to £3bn, making it the biggest state bailout since the collapse of the Royal Bank of Scotland in 2008.

Speaking at a hearing before MPs, the chief executive and co-founder Hayden Wood apologised for the “way things turned out with Bulb”. Bulb was placed into a rare “special administration”, giving it access to government funds to keep it supplying gas and electricity to its 1.7 million household customers.

Wood, who had provided management consultancy to the energy sector before he co-founded Bulb Energy, said: “My salary now in the last year is £250,000 a year.”

He added that the administrators “both Bulb and Simple [Bulb’s parent company] asked me to stay on to help. The reason I stayed on was because we wanted to support customers [and] have a smooth transition into special administration.

“The things we are doing within the company is to try and minimise costs for consumers, minimise costs for taxpayers, and hopefully effect a sale of the company out of special administration to again reduce costs for government.”

However, Labour MP Andy McDonald, a member of the business select committee, asked whether it was “morally justifiable” for taxpayers to be paying his £250,000 a year salary.

Wood responded: “I think everything we are doing right now is to try and complete a sale of the company so that we can minimise the cost to taxpayers and minimise the disruption to consumers.”

But McDonald said it was