Founder’s new firm... that looks like the old one

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 highprofile 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.

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 taxpayerfunded 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.’