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Ovo Energy is plotting a takeover of Shell’s UK domestic gas and electricity business in a move that would see it reclaim the number two slot in the British market.

Sky News has learnt that Ovo is expected to table an indicative offer for Shell Energy Retail Limited’s (SERL) UK operation, which has 1.4m energy customers.

Sources said that a bid would be tabled on Wednesday to meet an informal deadline set by Lazard, which is overseeing the process on Shell’s behalf.

If successful, it would grow Ovo’s customer base from about 4m UK households to 5.4m households, edging it ahead of Octopus Energy, which – following its takeover of the nationalised supplier Bulb – now has close to 5m household customers.

Industry executives said that Centrica, the owner of British Gas, had also been exploring an offer for the SERL arm.

Such a move would be controversial because it would see the industry’s largest player substantially grow its market share.

Centrica has also been embroiled in a scandal over the forced installation of pre-payment meters during the cost-of-living crisis, sparking fury among politicians about both the company’s conduct and regulator Ofgem’s oversight of the practices.

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Octopus Energy is said to be a less likely bidder for SERL, although an offer from it would not be inconceivable.

The industry’s biggest players have been caught up in a bitter row over the takeover of Bulb in recent months, with a group of suppliers led by Centrica mounting a legal challenge to the sale to Octopus.

The bailout of Bulb is now expected to cost far less than the multibillion pound bill originally envisaged as wholesale gas prices have continued to fall.

Ovo was among the rival bidders for Bulb, the collapse of which in November 2021 was the most significant among dozens of supplier failures.

Ofgem has faced heavy criticism for its approach to licensing new entrants to the market and has promised to overhaul the regime.

Shell said in January that it was launching a review of its household energy supply business in the UK, Germany and Netherlands.

Its presence in the latter two markets is much smaller than in the UK.

Shell is also keen to offload its broadband customer book in the UK, which has about 500,000 customers, according to insiders.

Ovo Energy does not have a presence in the UK broadband market and would want to offload that part of the Shell business to a partner.

When Ovo’s founder, Stephen Fitzpatrick, struck a deal to transform his company by acquiring the domestic energy arm of SSE in 2019, he sold its broadband customer base to TalkTalk.

It was unclear on Wednesday whether Ovo would fund a takeover of Shell’s UK arm from existing financial resources or whether it would need to raise new equity or debt.

Ovo recently became the first major supplier to pass on savings to customers and offer a fixed tariff below the level of the industry price cap.

It also launched what is said to be the cheapest electric vehicle tariff available, at 3p-per-mile.

An Ovo spokeswoman declined to comment on its interest in acquiring the Shell business.

Centrica and Shell also declined to comment.

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Italian restaurant chain Gusto on brink of administration

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Italian restaurant chain Gusto on brink of administration

The intense financial pressure facing Britain’s casual dining sector will be underlined this week when Gusto, the Italian restaurant chain, falls into administration.

Sky News has learnt that Interpath Advisory is preparing a pre-pack insolvency of Gusto, which trades from 13 sites.

Sources said that a vehicle set up by Cherry Equity Partners, the owner of Latin American restaurant concept Cabana, was the likely buyer.

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It is expected to take over most of Gusto’s sites although some job losses are likely.

A deal could be announced in the coming days, according to insiders.

The collapse of Gusto, which is backed by private equity investor Palatine, follows a string of increasingly heated warnings from hospitality executives about the impact of tax rises on the sector.

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Kate Nicholls, who chairs UK Hospitality, said this month that the industry faced a jobs bloodbath amid growing financial pressure on operators.

This week, Sky News reported that the restaurant industry veteran David Page, a former boss of PizzaExpress, was raising £10m to take advantage of cut-price acquisition opportunities in casual dining.

Mr Page is planning to become executive chairman of London-listed Tasty, which owns Wildwood and dim t, and rename it Bow Street Group.

A placing of shares in the company is likely to be completed this week.

Interpath declined to comment on the Gusto process.

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Tide turns as TPG leads talks to lead digital bank fundraising

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Tide turns as TPG leads talks to lead digital bank fundraising

TPG, the American private equity giant, is in advanced talks to take a stake in Tide, the British-based digital banking services platform.

Sky News has learnt that TPG, which manages more than $250bn in assets, is discussing acquiring a significant shareholding in the company.

Sources said that Tide’s existing investors were expected to sell shares to TPG, while a separate deal would involve another existing shareholder in the company acquiring newly issued shares.

The two transactions may be conducted at different valuations, although both are likely to see the company valued at at least $1bn, the sources added.

The size of TPG’s prospective stake in Tide was unclear on Monday.

Earlier this year, Sky News reported that Tide had been negotiating the terms of an investment from Apis Partners, a prolific investor in the fintech sector, although it was unclear whether this would now proceed.

Tide has roughly 650,000 SME customers in both Britain and India, with the latter market expanding at a faster rate.

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Morgan Stanley, the Wall Street bank, has been advising Tide on its fundraising.

Tide was founded in 2015 by George Bevis and Errol Damelin, before launching two years later.

It describes itself as the leading business financial platform in the UK, offering business accounts and related banking services.

The company also provides its SME ‘members’ in the UK a set of connected administrative solutions from invoicing to accounting.

It now boasts a roughly 11% SME banking market share in Britain.

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Tide, which employs about 2,000 people, also launched in Germany last May.

The company’s investors include Apax Partners, Augmentum Fintech and LocalGlobe.

Chaired by the City grandee Sir Donald Brydon, Tide declined to comment on Monday.

TPG also declined to comment.

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Trump trade war could still see America come off worse

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Trump trade war could still see America come off worse

It is a trade deal that will “rebalance, but enable trade on both sides,” said Ursula von der Leyen after the EU and US struck a trade deal in Scotland.

It was not the most emphatic declaration by the president of the European Commission.

The trading partnership between two of the biggest markets in the world is in significantly worse shape than it was before Donald Trump was elected, but this deal is better than nothing.

As part of the agreement, European exports to the US will be hit with a 15% tariff. That’s better than the 30% the bloc was threatened with but it is a world away from the type of open and free trade European leaders would like. The EU had offered tariff free trade to the US just weeks before the deal was announced.

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Instead, it has accepted a 15% tariff and agreed to ramp up its energy purchases from the US.

The EU tariff on US imports will remain close to zero but Europe did get some important exemptions – on aviation, critical raw materials, some chemicals and some medical equipment. That being said, the bloc did not achieve a breakthrough on steel, aluminium or copper, which are still facing a 50% tariff. It means the average tariff on EU exports to the US will now rise from 1.2 % last year to 17%.

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There is also confusion over the status of pharmaceuticals – an important industry to Europe. Products like Ozempic, which is made in Denmark, have flooded into the US market in recent years and Donald Trump was threatening tariffs as high as 50% on the sector.

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US and EU agree trade deal

It appears that pharmaceuticals will fall under the 15% bracket, even though President Trump contradicted official announcements by suggesting a deal had not yet been made on the industry. The risk is that the implementation of the deal could be beset with differences of interpretation, as has been the case with the Japan deal that Trump struck last week.

It also risks fracturing solidarity between EU states, all of which have different strategic industries that rely on the US to differing degrees. Germany’s BDI federation of industrial groups said: “Even a 15% tariff rate will have immense negative effects on export-oriented German industry.”

The VCI chemical trade association said rates were still “too high”. For German carmakers, including Mercedes and BMW, there was some reprieve from the crippling 27.5% tariff imposed by Trump. The industry is Europe’s top exporter to the US but the German trade body, the VDA, warned that a 15% rate would “cost the German automotive industry billions annually”.

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Who’s the winner in the US-EU trade deal?

Meanwhile, François Bayrou, the French Prime Minister, described the agreement as a “dark day” for the union, “when an alliance of free peoples, gathered to affirm their values and defend their interests, resolves to submission.”

While the deal has divided the bloc, the greater certainty it delivers is not to be snubbed at.

Markets bounced on the news, even though the deal will ultimately harm economic growth.

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‘Millions’ of EU jobs were in firing line

Analysts at Oxford Economics said: “We don’t plan material changes to our eurozone baseline forecast of 1.1% GDP growth this year and 0.8% in 2026 in response to the EU-US trade deal.

“While the effective tariff rate will end up at around 15%, a few percentage points higher than in our baseline, lower uncertainty and no EU retaliation are partial offsets.”

However, economists at Capital Economics said the economic outlook had now deteriorated, with growth in the bloc likely to drop by 0.2%. Germany and Ireland could be the hardest hit.

While the US appears to be the obvious winner in this negotiation, uncertainty still hangs over the US economy.

Trump has not achieved his goal of “90 deals in 90 days” and, in the end, American consumers could still bear the cost through higher prices.

That of course depends on how businesses share the burden of those higher costs, with the latest data suggesting that inflation is yet to rip through the US economy. While Europe determined on Sunday that a bad deal is better than no deal, some fear that the worst is yet to come for the Americans.

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