MCB's campaign targeting retail investors has worked like a charm.
👉 Background: AGL supplies about a third of Victoria's power and its coal and gas power stations are the BIGGEST greenhouse gas emitters in the country. We're talking around 8% of Australia's total carbon footprint 👣.
👉 What happened: AGL planned to demerge its coal-focussed biz from its renewables biz and it needed a 75% shareholder approval rate to make it happen. Buuut in walks Atlassian cofounder and billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes.
👉 What else: MCB offered to buy out AGL in February. Though that bid was unsuccessful, he HAS found success campaigning hard against AGL's demerger. The board just dumped the plan after it realised most of its retail investors were voting against it.
💡 There are two main types of investors in the share market: retail investors and institutional investors. Companies or organisations that invest on behalf of others are institutional investors... Like how super fund HESTA invests in AGL.
💡Retail investors are your everyday Aussies who invest their own money. Retail investors tend to own much smaller stakes than institutional investors, but with almost 60% of AGL's shareholders being retail investors, it all adds up.
💡Mike Cannon-Brookes ran an activist campaign to engage retail investors, who are historically tricky to get hold of... And hey, it looks like it worked!
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