Chris Loughlin told Utility Week the opening of the non-household retail market to competition in April next year could mean consolidation between utilities and more multi-utility opportunites.
However, he said this would be more likely to happen if market opening extended to domestic customers, as mooted by the Treasury in its last Autumn Statement.
He said: “You could speculate that there will be some consolidation and multi-utility opportunities going forward, I think that might be a possibility, there were some false starts about that some years ago.
“Probably what will facilitate that more is if household customers came into the de-regulated sector, and in the Autumn Statement… I think that would facilitate that multi-utility offering a little bit more, if that were to happen.”
United Utilities chief executive Steve Mogford said there are already new entrants in the Scottish market which are cross-selling from a telecoms or an energy background.
“We don’t have plans at the moment, our focus is on getting Water Plus up and running,” he told Utility Week.
However, he added: “If you look at the market in Scotland, you can see a number of new entrants in the market who effectively are cross-selling – either from a telecoms or an energy background into a water background. I think we’re already seeing that happening actually, and a number of those are registering in England.
“It will be interesting to see how that market develops over the next few years.”