History
Contact was incorporated on 8 November 1995 and became a state owned enterprise on 18 November 1995. Contact commenced operations on 1 February 1996, acquiring assets from ECNZ with a payment of $1.6 billion. As the founding chief executive, Paul Anthony was instrumental in establishing the corporation distinct from ECNZ.
In 1999, the company was sold in a public offering of shares, with 40% purchased by Edison Mission Energy (EME) as cornerstone shareholder. EME subsequently increased its shareholding to 51%.
Following financial difficulties elsewhere in its business, EME sold its shareholding to Origin Energy in 2004.
During the 2008 financial crisis, Contact decided to increase prices by up to 12% while doubling its directors' fees. As a result, it lost more than 40,000 customers in six months - 10% of the total. Its profit was halved. Contact calls this the worst blow to its reputation in the company's history.
Read more about this topic: Contact Energy
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“We may pretend that we’re basically moral people who make mistakes, but the whole of history proves otherwise.”
—Terry Hands (b. 1941)
“Classes struggle, some classes triumph, others are eliminated. Such is history; such is the history of civilization for thousands of years.”
—Mao Zedong (1893–1976)
“A poet’s object is not to tell what actually happened but what could or would happen either probably or inevitably.... For this reason poetry is something more scientific and serious than history, because poetry tends to give general truths while history gives particular facts.”
—Aristotle (384–323 B.C.)