Bulb’s admin costs will top £60m

The cost of running the administration of collapsed energy supplier Bulb will land at around £60 million, MPS have been told.

Administrator Teneo said its fees, those of its lawyers and the company it hired to find a new buyer for Bulb, will be around £10m higher than had been the case up to the end of January when the National Audit Office (NAO) reported.

This will be part of the overall cost of Bulb’s collapse, which is expected to heap a total of £246m on to either energy bills, or be paid by the Government.

Bulb collapsed into administration in 2021. It was one of many suppliers to fail in a time when wholesale gas prices were soaring.

The others were dealt with through other processes, but Bulb was too big, with 1.6 million customers. Experts worried that if another company had to take on those customers, it could destabilise that company and create a domino effect.

But the Government is also expected to make a profit from the deal, as Octopus Energy – which has bought Bulb – will return around £2.8 billion to the Treasury by either September next year or the year after.

As the new energy price cap was announced yesterday, Ofgem boss Jonathan Brearley said that new suppliers could enter a difficult market, replacing those that disappeared two years ago.

“We’re expecting there to be new entrants,” he said.

He added: “We do believe it’s possible – not certain but possible – in the second half of this year, that we begin to see new fixed tariffs or different kinds of deals re-enter the market.

“We may well see companies competing once more.”