The UK government is to provide £1.7bn of financial support for failed energy supplier Bulb to keep it running until it can be sold or its customers transferred to other suppliers.
Bulb went into special administration on Wednesday and will be run by global consultancy firm Teneo for the time being.
Teneo said it will cost around £2.1bn to keep Bulb trading until the end of April next year though Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng said more money will be available if needed.
Bulb would have run out of cash in the middle of December according to the reports this week.
The company is the UK’s seventh largest gas supplier with around 1.7mln customers and by far the largest of the twenty or so energy firms that have gone bust due to the wholesale gas crisis.
That size has meant it was not practicable for customers to be switched immediately to other suppliers under the supplier of last resort scheme, as has been the case with the other supplier failures.
Earlier this week, Sky News reported that merchant bank Lazards had been appointed to find a buyer for Bulb.
The bank has been advising Bulb on potential fundraising options for many months and has held talks with prospective buyers including OVO Energy, Octopus Energy, and Shell.
Some of these are believed to see Bulb as an attractive option in the long term with the government funding this winter season and the possibility that gas prices might return to more normal levels in 2022.