Utility Regulation, the Regulatory Asset Base and the Cost of Capital

Chairman Peter Freeman

The Competition Commission (CC) held the latest in its series of Spring Lectures on Wednesday 6 May 2009 with this year’s lecture being given by Professor Dieter Helm CBE, from the University of Oxford. Professor Helm’s lecture was on ‘Utility Regulation, the Regulatory Asset Base and the Cost of Capital.’ The text of his lecture and accompanying slides can be accessed here:

Professor Dieter Helm - Utility Regulation, the Regulatory Asset Base and the Cost of Capital - Slide presentation (pdf, 173kb) and text of speech (pdf, 178kb)

Professor Dieter Helm CBE

The lecture was chaired by CC Chairman, Peter Freeman and also featured a contribution from Steve Smith, Ofgem’s Managing Director of Networks.
Questions were then taken from the audience, which featured an invited gathering of representatives from many of the CC’s regular contacts in the economic, business and legal sectors, as well as guests from other regulators and the government.

Steve Smith, Ofgem’s Managing Director of Networks

About the speakers

Professor Dieter Helm CBE is an economist specialising in utilities, infrastructure, regulation and the environment, and concentrates on the energy, water and transport sectors in Britain and Europe. He is Professor of Energy Policy at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of New College, Oxford. He holds a number of advisory board appointments, including Chairman of the Academic Panel, Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and member of the Advisory Panel on Energy and Climate Security, Department for Energy and Climate Change. He was a member of the expert panel for the Department of Transport's Review of the Regulation of Airports, 2008-2009 of the DTI's Sustainable Energy Policy Advisory Board, 2002-2007, of the Prime Minister's Council of Science and Technology, 2004-2007, and of the DTI's Energy Advisory Panel from 1993-2003. Dieter is an Associate of the Smith School of Enterprise and the Environment, and associate editor of the Oxford Review of Economic Policy. His career to date has spanned academia, public policy and business. He founded OXERA in 1982, and has published extensively on economic topics.

Steve Smith is Ofgem’s Managing Director of Networks and Member of the Authority. Steve leads the team at Ofgem who regulate all of the gas and electricity transmission and distribution companies in Great Britain’s competitive energy market. This involves setting price controls every five years that create the incentives on the network companies to operate and invest efficiently, regulating the structure of their charges and access arrangements for network users and determining any connection disputes. Steve was previously Managing Director of Markets for four years, responsible for all aspects of the competitive wholesale and retail gas and electricity markets, European strategy and Ofgem’s sustainable development policies. He has also worked in the private sector as Director of Environmental and Regulatory Strategy at AEP Energy Services and as a senior consultant at PricewaterhouseCoopers advising in the energy, transport and postal sectors in the EU, Eastern Europe and South America. Steve graduated from Bristol University with an MSc in Economics and Econometrics and a BSc in Economics.