"There is probably an element of this because AGL seems to be doing more than closing a worthless site, it is actively stopping anyone else from coming in to operate that site."
Whatever are you talking about?
Australia doesn't operate some kind of Marxist command economy; this is a free market.
There is nothing whatsoever stopping any other enterprise (public or private) from stepping up an investing in energy capacity, at innumerable potential locations around NSW, to replace Liddell. Why does it have to take place at a site owned by AGL?
Why should anyone have the automatic right to use privately-owned property to conduct business just because the owner of that property chooses not to do so on that property?
By way of analogy, if Woolworths has a store that is in need of refurbishment but Woolworths management deems it to not make any commercial sense to spend the capital on the refurb, but to shut down that store instead, that doesn't mean that Woolworths has to allow Coles to set up shop on that particular location. Coles is welcome to take out a lease on the store next door, or in a nearby shopping centre, but why should it be allowed to conduct its business in a location over which Woolworths has legal rights?
Similarly, if CBA has some underutilised space in one of its branches, it doesn't mean that NAB can rock up one day and set up its own customer service counter in that underutilised space.
If AGL chooses to operate its asset base in a certain way with a view to optimising financial returns for its shareholders, it is completely within its rights to do so (providing, of course, it is within all the relevant legislation). That's what all for-profit organisations do.
And if AGL believes that is is better to build new energy generation capacity; rather than continue to commit shareholder capital to propping up old, inefficient capacity, what is unethical about that?
How is it any more unethical than CBA borrowing money from capital markets at 5%, and then lending it out at 5.2%, and generating a 15% ROE in the process, or Bunnings buying lawnmowers from China for $300, and selling them for $450, generating 25% ROE? Or Cochlear manufacturing and selling hearing implants at a 220% mark-up, thereby generating >40% ROE
If you think that AGL is behaving unethically, then you must be of the view that the entire Capitalist system, and any organisation that operates within it with a view to generating a financial returns for the providers of capital to such an organisation, is lacking in ethics.
If you want to apportion blame for high energy prices (which is what I sense is your bugbear), you need to look not at the individual companies that operate in the energy industry, but to the abject failure of policy on the part of successions of governments, both State and Federal, which has created a climate of legislative and regulatory uncertainty; and which in turn has prevented meaningful investment in new power generation over the past two decades, resulting in the tight market conditions we see today.
The real source of the problem is the people, who make the rules, lacking the requisite level of long-term vision, and being motivated by short-term political expediency and the pandering to special interest groups, instead of considering the broader national interest.
The strategic actions of the likes of AGL, Origin Energy, Alinta, Energy Australia, Ergon, etc., are merely the outworking of the prevailing rules.
AGL Price at posting:
$20.85 Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
(20min delay)