AGL board digs in for brand spanking new battle with Cannon-Brookes

Energy large AGL has declared it can stand behind its choice to reject all however one of many candidates for its board of administrators put ahead by billionaire investor Mike Cannon-Brookes, setting the scene for one more conflict over the way forward for Australia’s largest greenhouse fuel emitter.

Cannon-Brookes, the co-founder of software program firm Atlassian and one of many nation’s richest individuals, amassed an 11 per cent shareholding in AGL this yr earlier than launching a profitable marketing campaign to scuttle the board’s controversial proposal to spin out its carbon-intensive energy stations into a brand new entity that might have continued burning coal till the mid-2040s.

The marketing campaign in the end compelled the resignations of a number of AGL administrators, together with its chairman and chief government, and triggered a strategic evaluate into the corporate’s course. This month, AGL stated it could convey ahead the closure of its last-remaining coal-fired energy station to 2035, as much as a decade sooner than beforehand deliberate.

Nonetheless, the 185-year-old utilities large is now bracing for a brand new stoush with Cannon-Brookes’ Grok Ventures after refusing to endorse three of the 4 candidates it had nominated for AGL’s board of administrators forward of the corporate’s annual shareholder assembly subsequent month.

AGL’s new chairman, Patricia McKenzie, stated the board was making ready to defend its selections in coming talks with shareholders and the skilled advisory companies that information institutional traders on the best way to vote.

Loading

“They’ve introduced they are going to run a marketing campaign with our shareholders – we may even be speaking to our shareholders,” McKenzie instructed The Australian Monetary Evaluate’s vitality and local weather summit on Monday.

“In the end, it’s a matter for shareholders to determine the composition of the board, however we really feel that we have now decided on suggestions in the very best pursuits of the corporate, and we’re fairly ready to face behind that call.”

Following an in depth search, Cannon-Brookes’ funding firm, Grok Ventures, put ahead 4 director nominees for AGL, together with former Vitality Safety board chair Kerry Schott, Swinburne College chancellor John Pollaers, CSR director Christine Holman and former Tesla Vitality director Mark Twidell.