Ovo reportedly planning bid for Shell’s 1.4m household energy customers
Ovo Energy is reportedly planning to make a bid to buy 1.4 million household energy customers from Shell’s UK supply business as the oil company prepares to leave the retail market.
Ovo is expected to put forward a takeover offer that would swell its business to 5.4 million customers, according to Sky News, once again making it the second largest energy supplier in the UK market.
If it goes ahead, the Shell takeover would be Ovo’s second recent high-profile acquisition after it struck a deal in 2019 to take on 3.5 million SSE customers and became the largest supplier behind British Gas.
Ovo lost that No 2 position late last year to Octopus Energy after the latter agreed to buy Bulb after its collapse into administration a year earlier, increasing its customer base to 5 million homes.
Octopus Energy and the owner of British Gas, Centrica, are also understood to be interested in taking part in the Shell sale, according to Sky, which reported that Shell had hired the financial services firm Lazard to oversee the sale of the business.
It comes after Shell decided in January to undertake a “strategic review” of the household energy supply business, which it set up less than five years ago with the acquisition of First Utility. That review is expected to take “a number of months” and has not yet concluded.
Shell and Ovo Energy declined to comment on the Sky report.
Shell’s move into supplying gas and electricity directly to households had formed part of its ambition to widen the scope of its business from producing and selling fossil fuels to becoming the world’s biggest electricity company.
Its entry into the UK energy market coincided with a period of intense political scrutiny on UK energy companies, which have struggled to make a
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