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The chief executive of Ovo Energy, one of Britain’s biggest energy suppliers, is to step down in the middle of a search for investors to pump hundreds of millions of pounds into the company.
Sky News has learnt that David Buttress, the former Just Eat chief who served a brief period as Boris Johnson’s cost-of-living tsar, has told colleagues that he will be leaving the company following discussions with its board.
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Mr Buttress joined Ovo in May 2024, two months after his appointment was announced.
Chris Houghton, a former Ovo chief executive under founder Stephen Fitzpatrick, is said to have been lined up to return as Mr Buttress’s successor from Wednesday.
Mr Houghton is said to have expressed confidence in Ovo’s prospects before agreeing to return.
On Tuesday evening, however, sources said it had also been agreed that the company’s chief financial officer, James Davies, would leave the company.
Mr Davies is expected to be replaced by Simon Todd, his deputy and a long-standing Ovo executive.
Ovo has been contacted for comment.
The latest leadership overhaul at the company will come just months after the former Virgin Money chief Dame Jayne-Anne Gadhia, was named chair of Ovo’s retail energy arm.
Ovo has about 4 million retail customers, placing it behind the likes of Octopus Energy and Centrica-owned British Gas in the household energy supply market.
Its quest to raise roughly £300m of new equity at Ovo has been ongoing for months, with bankers at Rothschild engaging in talks with numerous financial investors.
Last month, Sky News revealed that a Norwegian investment group had abandoned talks about an investment amid concern that the industry’s regulatory regime is obstructing efforts to attract new capital.
Verdane, which is based in Oslo, had been in detailed talks as recently as this month about injecting a substantial sum into Ovo in return for a large stake in the…
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