If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em. After years of losing customers to cut-price rivals, Centrica, the owner of British Gas, now seems to accept it cannot rely on lazy or loyal customers paying sky-high prices to prop up profits for its bloated supply operations for ever (Emily Gosden writes).
Nursing the bruises from a hefty kick in the right direction from the government, which capped standard tariffs early last year, the supplier is pursuing a radical cost-cutting drive with the bold goal of becoming “the lowest-cost supplier by 2022”.
It’s the right aim and, if Centrica can deliver, it could yet vindicate Iain Conn’s decision in 2015 to focus the group on its customer-facing businesses, of which British Gas is core. But it’s going
