National Grid is one of the largest investor-owned utility groups in the world, powering the gas and electricity networks in the UK and supplying electricity across New England and New York in the US. A heavily regulated business, the company needs to spend about £25bn ($38.3bn) over the next eight years upgrading, replacing and renovating its infrastructure in the UK and a further £10bn in the US.
“In 2013, we will spend about twice what we spent two or three years ago and that was about double our expenditure two or three years before that. So the pace of our investment is increasing substantially. We expect to fund it all from debt and retained earnings,” says National Grid global tax and treasury director Malcolm Cooper.
