Scottish and Southern Energy is not a takeover target for Gazprom, "at the moment", according to one of the Russian gas giant's UK executives.

Shares in the Perth-based utility and in Centrica, the UK's largest gas retailer, ticked up yesterday after Gazprom's deputy chief executive, Alexander Medvedev, said at the weekend that his company was near to closing a deal to increase its market presence in Britain.

Medvedev told reporters at an economic forum in St Petersburg: "In the near future there will be a deal to further increase the customer base on the British market. Anyone who will be in London for the Wimbledon tennis tournament will know about it."

The two-week Wimbledon tournament starts at the end of June.

Speculation that Medvedev was eyeing SSE and Centrica first surfaced in January 2006 when he said Gazprom aimed to control 20% of Britain's gas by 2015 and said that one way of achieving this goal would be to acquire a major utility supplying energy direct to the consumer.

He said at the time: "To start from scratch in retail would be impossible - but through acquisitions, yes, we do not rule this out. We are looking at such opportunities now. We are not afraid of such size as ScottishPower or Scottish and Southern but we have no concrete plans."

Yesterday, Philip Dewhurst, a spokesman for Gazprom marketing and trading, the firm's UK unit, said: "We don't have Centrica or Scottish and Southern in our sights at the moment. Our plan in the UK is to grow our retail business organically."

A Moscow-based spokesman also denied interest in Cen-trica, and he repeated Gazprom's interest in potential acquisitions internationally.

He said: "With our financial strength, any company in the world is on our watch list, but that does not concern Centrica."

Analysts at Citigroup said in a note: "Inevitably this is going to raise speculation" that Gazprom is about to bid for Centrica. Their prediction for a buyout price per share was pitched at around 450p a share.

However, last year, Gazprom bought a UK energy retailer, Pennine Natural Gas, which supplies industrial users such as Headingley Cricket Ground, and it is now targeting NHS hospitals and other big name firms and organisations to expand its British customer base.

Some analysts believe it is possible that the proposed acquisition to which Medvedev was referring was the gas supply company NGSS, which is already part-owned by Gazprom and which operates from the same building as Pennine in Wilmslow, Cheshire.

Centrica shares rose by more than 5% to 377p at one point, while SSE shares were up 2.1% just before 9am, at 1479p, compared to a 0.6% rise in the FTSE-100 index.

However, SSE shares later fell back to close at 1472p, while Centrica finished at 367.25p.