Bulb founder’s new firm… that looks like the old one
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New energy company launched by Bulb co-founder Amit Gudka has extensive ties to collapsed supplier
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The new energy company launched by Bulb co-founder Amit Gudka has extensive ties to the collapsed supplier, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Documents show Field Energy, a battery storage company launched last year, has shareholders including the former chairman of Bulb and the parent group of the bankrupt company.
Simple Energy, which entered government after Bulb’s high-profile bankruptcy in November last year, has a minority stake. John Wells, who was named director of Bulb in 2015 and was chairman at the time of its collapse, owns 7,129 shares.
Good idea: Documents show Field Energy has shareholders including Bulb’s former chairman and parent group of the bankrupt company
Giant Ventures, a venture capital firm that employs Gudka’s former Bulb partner Hayden Wood, is also an investor. Despite only launching last year, Field has already secured £77m in funding and licenses from beleaguered regulator Ofgem.
Bulb’s high-profile bankruptcy left more than 1.5 million customers in limbo last year and the taxpayer-funded bailout cost £6.5 billion.
Unlike Wood, who continued to take a salary of £250,000 a year for months after Bulb’s collapse, Gudka – a DJ and former Barclays energy trader – left the company before it went bankrupt.
Together they put together almost £10 million in executive salaries and windfalls from the sale of company shares.
In a statement to this newspaper, Gudka tried to distance himself from the collapse.
He said: “I left Bulb in February 2021, when the company had a six-month hedging policy and a fully controlled set of results had just been completed on a going concern basis.
“I first informed the board in January 2020 of my intention to leave.”