Australia’s biggest energy producer plans to abandon its coal-fired power stations and its owners in a massive victory for the green tech billionaire after a relentless campaign
- AGL Energy announces plans to desegregate coal-fired power plants
- Chief Executive Graeme Hunt and Chairman Peter Boughton are both resigning.
- Billionaire climate activist Mike Cannon-Brooks owns an 11.8 percent stake in AGL
- He used his share to prevent the demerger from getting the required 75 per cent support
Australia’s largest energy producer AGL has rejected plans to desegregate its coal-fired power stations after a campaign by a billionaire. Climate change Activist Mike Cannon-Brooks.
AGL Energy announced on Monday that it would end plans to separate AGL Energy into AGL Australia and Accel Energy, resulting in the resignations of both Chief Executive Graeme Hunter and Chairman Peter Boughton.
Mr Cannon-Brooks, Australia’s second richest man with an estimated net worth of $27.87 billion, used his 11.8 per cent stake in AGL Energy through Grok Ventures to scrap the demerger offer.
Australia’s largest energy producer AGL has abandoned plans to isolate its coal-fired power stations following a campaign by billionaire climate change activist Mike Cannon-Brooks (pictured is the Liddell Power Station at Muswellbrook in the NSW Hunter Valley) closing in April 2023)
AGL Energy told the Australian Securities Exchange on Monday, before the market opened, this meant there would not be a 75 percent approval threshold among shareholders for the demerger to occur.
It blamed Mr Cannon-Brooks in its media release without naming him.
“AGL Energy believes that the demerger proposal will be supported by both retail and institutional shareholders, many of whom are long-term holders of AGL Energy shares,” AGL Energy said.
‘However, with regard to projected voter turnout and opposition from a small number of investors, including Grok Ventures, AGL Energy believes the demerger proposal has sufficient support to meet the 75 percent approval threshold for the arrangement’s plan. not available.’
Chief executive Graeme Hunt and chairman Peter Boughton are both resigning.
Jacqueline Hay also stepped down as non-executive director effective Monday.
Mike Cannon-Brooks, Australia’s second-richest man with an estimated net worth of $27.87 billion, used his 11.8 percent stake in AGL Energy through Grok Ventures to kick off the demerger offer (he is pictured with wife Annie Is)
Diane Smith-Gander will resign from the AGL Energy board after her full-year results are released in August.
Mr Cannon-Brooks, co-founder of workplace software giant Atlassian, wants AGL Energy to shut down its coal-fired power stations, with the Liddell plant in Muswellbrook in the Hunter Valley, New South Wales already closing in April 2023.
Last month, AGL Energy announced the Liddell plant, commissioned in 1971, would be converted into an “integrated, low-carbon industrial energy hub.”
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