Centrica and Masdar only bidders for U.K.’s failed bulb

(Bloomberg) --

Only two firms, British Gas owner Centrica Plc and Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala Investment Co.-owned Masdar bid to buy collapsed U.K. energy supplier Bulb, the Sunday Times reported. 

The first round of bids closed earlier this month, but of the six interested parties only those two submitted non-binding offers, the newspaper said, without detailing how it got the information. That makes a potential sale less likely, raising the chances that taxpayers will have to provide more funds than initially estimated. An outcome is not expected until June.  

Centrica declined to comment to the Sunday Times, while Masdar did not reply to requests for comment. 

Bulb Energy Ltd. collapsed in November as rocketing wholesale energy prices brought the company to its knees. 

While the clients of other failed energy firms were absorbed by bigger players in the industry, the size of Bulb, which was the U.K.’s seventh-largest energy supplier, made it impossible to take a similar approach, so the company had to enter into a court process known as special administration.

Hayden Wood, Bulb’s co-founder and chief executive officer, apologized earlier this month for the multibillion-pound cost to taxpayers from the company’s collapse.

The firm is being run by administrators Teneo Inc. with government money under regulator Ofgem’s special administration regime. It’s set to cost 2.2 billion pounds ($2.8 billion) by the end of 2023, according to forecasts by the U.K.’s Office of Budget Responsibility.

Centrica wants Bulb’s customers only and has asked for taxpayer support to buy the power needed to heat those customers’ homes, according to The Sunday Times. Masdar, which is chaired by Sultan al Jaber, the head of UAE state energy firm Adnoc, was interested in buying Bulb before it collapsed, the newspaper added. 

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