British billionaire Guy Hands eyed Sun Cable investment, emails reveal

afr.com:

British financier Guy Hands has been forced to grant a lease to Mike Cannon-Brookes’ Sun Cable after legal proceedings which revealed his Terra Firma vehicle was the third bidder in an auction that ultimately handed control of the collapsed project to the Atlassian billionaire’s Grok Ventures.

Mr Hands owns Consolidated Pastoral, the sprawling agricultural empire once owned by Kerry Packer which had granted leases to Sun Cable. The company planned to use the leases to build its massive solar farms in the Northern Territory before exporting the power to Singapore via Darwin.

Guy Hands founded Terra Firma, one of Europe’s biggest private equity firms. 

The dispute over the lease with Mr Hands is not the first stoush Mr Cannon-Brookes has had with a fellow billionaire. Sun Cable called in FTI Consulting as administrators after Mr Cannon-Brookes and his joint venture partner, Fortescue executive chairman Andrew Forrest, could not agree on the direction of the energy project and whether it should focus on exports.

This week, Grok outlined its Sun Cable strategy after the company exited administration. It will apply for a licence this month in Singapore to import energy and says it had interest from customers there and in Darwin for much more electricity than the project would deliver.

But the administration proceedings, in the Supreme Court of NSW, show the administration process was held up because Consolidated Pastoral refused to hand over the lease to Sun Cable’s new owner, and instead repeatedly pressed it for more information about the project’s plans.

The ambitious venture to ship energy to Singapore will require billions of dollars in outside funding. Grok has already secured one backer, Quinbrook Infrastructure