Tech billionaire Mike Cannon-Brookes’ Grok Ventures and its partner Canada’s Brookfield Asset Management are walking away from their joint bid to acquire AGL Energy after the Australian electricity producer rejected the consortium’s sweetened offer.
Brookfield and Grok Ventures had on Friday raised their offer to buy 100% of AGL Energy for about A$5.4 billion , from the consortium’s original bid of A$5 billion that was made last month. Over the weekend, AGL Energy rejected the latest offer of A$8.25 per share, saying “the revised unsolicited proposal is still well below both the fair value of the company on a change of control basis and relative to the expected value of the proposed demerger.
The consortium’s latest proposal “ignores the momentum we have recently seen in the business through our solid half year result, strong progress on the demerger, strong interest in our energy transition investment partnership and improvements we are seeing in forward wholesale prices,” AGL Energy said in aFollowing the latest rejection, Cannon-Brookes tweeted: “The Brookfield-Grok consortium looking to take private & transform AGL is putting our pens down, with great sadness.