Atlassian Co-CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes poses for a photograph with Utah Jazz co-owners, Dwyane Wade and Ryan Smith throughout Round 1 Game 3 of the NBA Playoffs on April 21, 2022 at vivint.SmartHome Arena in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Melissa Majchrzak | National Basketball Association | Getty Images
Atlassian Co-CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes has taken an 11% stake in Australia’s most outstanding utility corporations, AGL Energy, in an effort to force it to burn much less coal, a serious contributor to local weather change.
The Australian software program billionaire, who grew to become a component proprietor of the United States’ Utah Jazz basketball workforce in 2020, purchased the stake by way of his non-public funding group Grok Ventures. He’s now the most important single holder in the company.
Cannon-Brookes has spoken out about threats from local weather change, and is now performing on his considerations after the company rejected a earlier takeover bid from him and different traders.
The new marketing campaign goals to cease AGL’s proposed split into two corporations: Energy retailer AGL Australia and electrical energy generator Accel Energy. AGL Energy Chairman Peter Botten wrote in a letter to investors that the break up would assist Australia’s energy system responsibly transfer towards decarbonization and create worth over the long run.
Cannon-Brookes would not share that view.
“The demerger is mindless, or cents. We consider it destroys worth for everybody — shareholders, staff, Australia and the planet,” he wrote in a tweet on Monday. He urged different AGL Energy traders to vote in opposition to the proposal.
He elaborated on his place in a letter to AGL Energy’s board.
“Under the demerger proposal, AGL A [Australia] will proceed to supply a majority of its energy from Accel Energy, which at this time generates electrical energy with 50% increased emissions depth than the remainder of the grid,” he wrote. “We consider this publicity to coal-fired energy era is inconsistent together with your proposal that AGL A [Australia] will probably be a frontrunner in sustainability.”
Cannon-Brookes and his buddy from the University of New South Wales, Scott Farquhar, based Atlassian in 2002. The collaboration software program maker went public in 2015, and with income progress charges sometimes above the 30% mark, the inventory became a favorite among growth investors.
Growth software program corporations, significantly people who sometimes lose cash like Atlassian, have misplaced their sheen in current months as rates of interest improve.
But Cannon-Brookes stays one of many world’s wealthiest folks. He and Farquhar every personal 19% of Atlassian’s excellent Class A shares, that are price a mixed $25 billion.
In October, Cannon-Brookes and his spouse, Annie, made a “inexperienced pledge,” committing to spend over $1.5 billion on local weather initiatives by 2030. Grok Ventures has invested in renewable energy company Sun Cable, which is creating infrastructure to retailer solar energy in Australia and transfer it to Singapore. Grok Ventures additionally backed WeaveGrid, a San Francisco-based electric-vehicle software program start-up.
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