ScottishPower

ScottishPower Plc is a vertically integrated energy company headquartered in Glasgow, Scotland. It is the distribution network operator for the central and southern Scotland and the Merseyside and North Wales regions. The company also supplies electricity and natural gas to homes and business around the United Kingdom and generates power for supply to the grid. It also owns PPM Energy in the United States. ScottishPower is quoted on the London Stock Exchange as part of the FTSE 100 Index, and has a secondary listing on the New York Stock Exchange.

History

Scottish Power was formed in 1990, in preparation for the privatisation of the previously nationalised Scottish electricity industry the following year. Previously the UK government had privatised the English and Welsh electricity industry by splitting the market into 12 regional electricity companies (RECs) and two power generators. However in Scotland, the industry was already organised on an integrated generation, distribution and supply basis, and this integration survived the privatisation to become a model for the rest of the United Kingdom. ScottishPower was largely formed from of the larger of the two Scottish electricity boards, the South of Scotland Electricity Board, whilst the other, the North of Scotland Hydro Board, eventually became part of the Scottish and Southern Energy Group (the nuclear power stations in Scotland were spun off into a third company, Scottish Nuclear, which was not sold off with ScottishPower and Scottish Hydro Electric, but was sold later as part of British Energy).

Resources

• Scottish Power Divisions and subsidiaries

Fat Cat payoffs

The gas and electricity provider's former chief executive Ian Russell and three colleagues received £10.9m for pay and pension compensation. The sums have been branded 'obscene' by the Scottish National Party energy spokesman Richard Lochhead, and come to light just three months after the electricity and gas provider warned customers about inflation-busting bill hikes.

Mr Russell, who left in January this year after five years as chief executive, received a £2.3m compensation payment as well as benefiting from a resultant pension top-up of £2.7m. The compensation sum is more than three times his salary of £648,000, while his pension windfall nearly doubled his total entitlement to £6.8m. His colleagues Charles Berry and David Nish, who both left the firm last September, pocketed a total of £2.6m and £2.2m in extra compensation and extra pension sums respectively. And Judi Johansen, the former head of the company's PacifiCorp arm that was sold this year, walked off with a total of £1.1m.

The figures are published in Scottish Power's 2005/06 annual report and accounts, and are on top of their normal pay and pension entitlements totalling a further £10.5m. The plc made £675m profit before tax in the financial year to March 2006. Scottish Power raised gas prices by 15% and electricity by 8% in March this year, only to warn that bills would rise again due to high wholesale costs. ^[1]

People

Non Executive directors

• Euan Baird

=Management 2006

• Philip Bowman Chief Executive
• Simon Lowth Finance Director
• Terry Hudgens Chief Executive Officer, PPM Energy Inc
• Susan Reilly Commercial Director
• David Rutherford Director, Energy Networks
• John Campbell Director, Energy Wholesale
• Willie MacDiarmid Director, Energy Retail
• Sheelagh Duffield Company Secretary
• Stephen Dunn Director, Human Resources and Communications

Source, December 2006.

References

1. ^Sacked power chiefs get 'obscene' pay-off This is Money, 18 June 2006