The Utilities Act 2000 is principally focused upon promoting greater competition within the electricity industry. Its provisions will have a profound, but possibly unintended, impact upon the structure of the electricity industry in the UK, and ensure the continued requirement for a regulatory...

The takeovers that have occurred within the Regional Electricity Companies (RECs) since the privatization of the UK electricity industry are reviewed. The article describes the nature and scale of the changes that have occurred, and the policy considerations that have influenced the behaviour of...

This paper examines the assumption that the injection of market discipline and private sector management practices will result in the transformation of public services. The present UK government looks for an opportunity to achieve synergy between the public and private sectors to improve the...

Mergers and Acquisitions (M&A) of European utility sectors subsequent to privatization and deregulation triggered widespread concern due to the crucial role played by utility sectors in a country's economic and social development. From the study of a sample of 156 cases of M&A within utility...

<title/> The enhancement of public service performance has been a central concern of successive Labour governments since 1997. Best Value is intended to address this by replacing the former policy of compulsory competitive tendering with a policy that has been likened to a local government version of...

While recent decades have witnessed a growth in the outsourcing of public services in Britain, the post-1997 UK Labour governments have sought to put in place mechanisms aimed at encouraging long-term collaborative contracting relationships marked by less reliance on cost-based competition. This...