   Long way to the finishing line  Last July a senior executive
of Southern Company confided that it had considered launching a
bid for National Power only to conclude that it would be biting
off more than it could chew, writes Michael Harrison.  He was
speaking the day after the Atlanta-based company had decided to
limit its ambitions to a pounds 1.1bn takeover of South Western
Electricity.  Ten months on, size is apparently no longer a
stumbling block. But if the pounds 7.5bn merger of Southern and
National Power is to proceed then it will have to overcome a
mountain of regulatory and political hurdles in Britain and the
US.  The regulatory obstacles on both sides of the Atlantic are
onerous. Even if Southern does sell off a large minority stake
in Sweb, the deal will raise objections from the electricity
regulator, Professor Stephen Littlechild, and possibly the
Office of Fair Trading, because of the vertical integration that
would result.  This might not necessarily mean an automatic
referral to the Monop