Russell says: "There are no material issues in the business that have not been disclosed to the market. I am fired up, energised and confident about this three year turnaround."

"All I know is that that EQT and AGL would not have found anything materially adverse in the business. It's just how they think about the opportunity is different to how we think about the opportunity."

Russell says he and his executive team have signed up to long term equity incentives which mature in three years time. The hurdles built into the equity incentives include lifting the share price to $4.76 a share.

Vocus is suffering from the roll-up of a range of different assets under the one roof without sufficient attention being paid to integration of the different businesses. Fixing this is not made any easier by the disruption caused to the business from the NBN Co wholesale broadband network creating havoc with retail profit margins.

The strict confidentiality surrounding the process of due diligence in takeover offers means it can be used by various parties to justify a variety of different excuses for abandoning an acquisition.

But there is no way AGL is using this particular decision to walk away from Vocus as a negotiating tactic.

It had scores of people in the due diligence facilities provided by Vocus from the last Tuesday morning starting with its financial Adviser Deutsche Bank.

Its decision to go after Vocus was based on extensive technical advice about fibre networks from Accenture. During its due diligence work over the past week it was assisted by accountants from EY.

The move by AGL chief executive to spend up to $4 billion expanding into telco infrastructure was well founded. It reflected the strategic convergence of energy delivery and telco services.

The future of energy is all about the decisions made by consumers in front of and behind the meter.

AGL is facing pressure on its earnings over the next three years from the surge in growth of renewable energy which is also called distributed energy.

Analysts at Macquarie summed up the problems facing AGL in a note last week.

“Our expectation is NPAT will drop from $1 billion to $750 million to $850 million over the next five years as the benefits of the LREC contribution and Liddell power station decline,” the analysts said.

“At the same time super profits from legacy gas and coal contracts end, along with tighter regulation around power prices as the government sets policy to drive the overall price lower. Whilst capital return adds additional value it does not address the fundamental challenge.”

Redman has sent a clear signal to the market he is willing to spend big to achieve diversification of earnings and restore profit growth. That will make it harder to get a bargain but it won’t spell the end of his quest.