Scottish & Southern Energy, another utility, offers stakeholder pensions.In the US, ScottishPower was hit by a break-down of its power generation plant at Hunter, Utah, in November. This coincided with a hike in US energy prices, resulting from a power shortage in California.Yesterday, it said that it was costing it around $1m (£650,000) a day while Hunter remained out of action. In addition, the hike in energy prices seen in the US would cost it about £170m more than it expected to pay, for buying extra electricity to supply to its customers.The Utah generator is not expected to be fixed until May, leaving the company with a bill of £270m in total up to that date.Mr Russell said that the company hoped to recoup most of these exceptional charges through charging higher energy prices in future, though this requires agreement from the regulators. For the nine months to 31 December, pre-tax profit was unchanged at £441m. After taking account of the US problems and a tighter pricing imposed by regulators in the UK, earnings per share fell 25 per cent to 21.1p The company's shares closed up 16p at 465p.. British Telecom yesterday accused Oftel of being "overbearing and bureaucratic" after the regulator moved to extend price caps on its residential calls and network charges.

British Telecom yesterday accused Oftel of being "overbearing and bureaucratic" after the regulator moved to extend price caps on its residential calls and network charges. BT will be forced to keep call costs down for a further year from August. The existing control on residential call prices, introduced in 1997, will continue at the current rate. The cap could save customers up to £270m over the year, said Oftel.The regulator also plans to introduce controls on BT's wholesale network for another four years from October, which would mean the operator must cut charges to others connecting to its network. At the moment, BT has to reduce its interconnection charges by the retail price index (RPI) minus 8 per cent. Under the proposals, controls would be split into four "baskets", with charges varying from RPI minus 13 per cent to RPI minus 7.5 per cent.One equity analyst estimated yesterday that this averaged out at RPI minus 10.5 per cent. This could cost the company up to £15m in profits per year, but the figure could rise to £100m if BT went ahead with plans to spin off its network business.David Edmonds, head of Oftel, said the proposals represented "a firm and fair settlement for BT, its customers and competitors".John Hammond, a BT spokesman, said the targets were achievable but criticised the planned wholesale controls. "There are some worrying signs of over-fiddly detail, over-regulation, over-complexity," he said "Oftel remains overbearing and bureaucratic.

Why else would they continue the retail control for a year and come up with new network control baskets?"Shares in BT closed down 26p at 686p yesterday.. More than 33,000 Tesco supermarket workers shared a £123m share-option payout yesterday believed to the biggest in British corporate history. On average, each of the 66,000 employees who invested part of their monthly wages in a Save As You Earn scheme received shares worth £5,000. More than 33,000 Tesco supermarket workers shared a £123m share-option payout yesterday believed to the biggest in British corporate history.