Leading the divestment of a major UK utilities supplier

Case study

A FTSE30 company had decided to divest a significant business unit, which had 8,000 staff a net value of £750m. Commitments had been made to regulators and shareholders and an aggressive timeline had been committed to in order to complete the divestment. 

The separation required a complicated delivery, touching all parts of the group. Material change was needed across both business and IT functions. Oaklin's client had limited experience in mobilising complex delivery programmes, nor were they experienced in driving M&A related transformations.  Internally led deliveries were often slow to deliver, and a rapid and ‘right first time’ delivery was required.

Oaklin was asked to lead the separation effort. An approach was quickly agreed with leadership over what this must look like, and a costed plan agreed covering all change required within each business, their support functions, and the resulting change. Oaklin mobilised a team of over 300 hybrid resources over a 3 month period to address the establishment of new legal entities, migration of customers entities, consequential change to regulatory and other external relationships, and the separation of commercially sensitive data on over 80 shared systems. Of note was the migration of over 5 million customer payments to new bank accounts, without any external impact. 

The programme delivered to plan and cost and exceeded all quality targets. The Oaklin team achieved 99.7% accuracy in the customer migration, and the programme was recognised for the seamless integration of all teams that spanned the business/IT divide. The business was made ready for separation, and was succesfully sold to a competitor. 

Oaklin continues to advise this client on various transaction related activities.