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
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“As History stands, it is a sort of Chinese Play, without end and without lesson.”
—Henry Brooks Adams (1838–1918)
“There is a constant in the average American imagination and taste, for which the past must be preserved and celebrated in full-scale authentic copy; a philosophy of immortality as duplication. It dominates the relation with the self, with the past, not infrequently with the present, always with History and, even, with the European tradition.”
—Umberto Eco (b. 1932)