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.
Contents
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
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
Board
- Charles Miller Smith Joined the Board as Deputy Chairman in August 1999 and was appointed as Chairman in April 2000.
- Euan Baird Joined the Board in January 2001 and brings executive level experience in the electronics and engineering industry to the ScottishPower Board.
- Donald Brydon Joined the Board in May 2003 and is the senior independent director.
- Nick Rose Joined the Board in February 2003 and he is Chairman of the Audit Committee, nominated as the Committee’s designated “financial expert”.
- Nancy Wilgenbusch Joined the Board in June 2004.
- Peter Hickson Joined the Board on 1st September 2006.
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.
Previous Members
- David Nish Formerly Exucutive Director of Infrastructure
PR agencies
Environmental Connections
Corporate Responsibility
- Understanding and managing the impact we have on the environment and striving for continuous improvement is a significant part of ScottishPower’s overall approach to corporate responsibility.
Over the years in our Environmental Performance Report our aim has been to provide a transparent account of how we’ve performed across all the key areas that are relevant to our business, publicising our successes, but at the same time documenting the areas where our reporting process highlighted results that signalled “could do better”.
This year our environmental performance is reported within the 12 impact areas that make up our overall corporate responsibility report.
Within these 12 impact areas we have strived to ensure they are compatible with the recently published DEFRA Reporting Guidelines for UK Business – “Environmental Key Performance Indicators” which cover the areas of emissions, resource use, supply chains, products, biodiversity and regulatory compliance. [2]
References
- ^Sacked power chiefs get 'obscene' pay-off This is Money, 18 June 2006
- ^ Environmental Management, 31 January 2007
