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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—Hermann Hesse (1877–1962)
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
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—Richard M. Nixon (1913–1995)