The new energy firm launched by Bulb co-founder Amit Gudka has extensive links to the collapsed supplier, The Mail on Sunday can reveal.
Documents show Field Energy, a battery storage venture launched last year, has shareholders that include Bulb’s former chairman and the failed firm’s parent group.
Simple Energy, which entered administration after Bulb’s high-profile failure in November last year, holds a minority stake. John Wells, who was made a Bulb director in 2015 and was its chairman on its collapse, has 7,129 shares.
Bright idea: Documents show Field Energy has shareholders that include Bulb’s former chairman and the failed firm’s parent group
Giant Ventures, a venture capital firm that employs Gudka’s former Bulb partner Hayden Wood, is also an investor. Despite being launched only last year, Field has already been handed £77million in funding and has been granted licences by beleaguered regulator Ofgem.
Bulb’s high-profile failure left more than 1.5million customers in limbo last year, and its taxpayer-funded bailout has cost £6.5billion.
Unlike Wood, who continued to take a £250,000-a-year salary months after Bulb’s collapse, Gudka – a DJ and former Barclays energy trader – left the firm before its downfall.
They pocketed nearly £10million between them in director salaries and windfalls from sales of company shares.
In a statement to this newspaper, Gudka sought to distance himself from the collapse.
He said: ‘I left Bulb in February 2021, at which time the company had a six-month hedging policy in place, and a fully audited set of results had just been completed on a going concern basis.
‘I first informed the board of my intention to leave in January 2020.’
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