E.on Acquires Ovo Energy Deal for 9.6 Million UK Households

e.on acquires ovo energy deal to create Britain’s biggest gas and electricity supplier, bringing together a business with about 5.6 million UK customers and Ovo’s 4 million. The combined group would serve about 9.6 million customers if regulators approve the transaction. For households, E.ON said existing tariffs will be honoured in full and service will continue unchanged while the deal waits for clearance.

9.6 million customers would put the combined company ahead of Octopus, which serves almost 8 million households in the UK. E.ON did not disclose the deal value, although reports estimated it at £600m. That scale gives the buyer a larger retail base just as the UK energy market remains centered on scale, customer retention and the ability to fund long-term investment.

Spieker on E.ON retail scale

5.6 million customers sit inside E.ON’s existing UK business, and the company said the acquisition would strengthen that retail arm. Marc Spieker, chief operating officer commercial at E.ON, said: "The United Kingdom is an important growth market for E.ON, particularly for flexibility and customer‑focused energy solutions. The planned acquisition of Ovo strengthens our retail business."

4 million customers come with Ovo, the supplier founded in 2009 by Stephen Fitzpatrick. In 2019, Ovo agreed to buy SSE’s home energy business in a £500m deal and became the UK’s then second-biggest energy supplier. The new transaction would reverse that ranking again by moving the combined business past Octopus on household reach.

Ovo home services sale

1 home services business has already been carved out of the deal path: Ovo said it had agreed to sell that unit to Hometree. E.ON also said it would continue Ovo’s energy intelligence platform licence agreement with Kaluza and would look into using the platform across the wider E.ON group outside the UK. That keeps the software relationship in place even as ownership of the core supply business changes.

September brought the strain that makes the sale easier to read. Ovo said in its financial accounts that there was uncertainty around the plan it had agreed with the regulator to improve its capital position after failing financial stress tests, and it later cut hundreds of jobs to reduce costs. Stephen Fitzpatrick said: "Energy retail is now more regulated, more capital intensive and increasingly dependent on long-term investment and scale. In that context, bringing Ovo together with E.ON is the right next step for customers, for colleagues and for the long-term commitment that decarbonisation requires."

Second-half approval window

Second-half clearance is the key milestone now, and E.ON said no changes will be made at E.ON Next or at Ovo while it awaits regulatory approval. If that timetable holds, the deal would leave customers under the same tariffs and service terms for now, while the ownership change works through the approval process. Chris Norbury said: "For decades the UK energy system focused too much on those upstream. Now is our opportunity to change that. Solar, batteries, EVs and a retailer built to orchestrate. That is what this deal is about: customers in control and new"