The author is a Reuters Breakingviews columnist. The opinions expressed are his own.

By Antony Currie

MELBOURNE, Oct 15 (Reuters Breakingviews) - Oliver Curtis has taken the blame game over Firmus Technologies' IPO flop to a new level. Rather than acknowledging fault, or singling out the investment bankers or the punchy $30 billion valuation they sought, the co-CEO of the neocloud company pointed the finger squarely at his native country Australia for having "dim views of people taking a risk".

The self-styled "homegrown hero" is not alone. Down Under billionaire and Firmus shareholder James Packer lamented that the country "tends to tear down aggressive entrepreneurs and America builds them up". While these sound like typical throwing-toys-out-of-the-pram moments, both have a point, albeit a small one: The breadth of Australia's $2 trillion economy is a concern. Industries like car manufacturing and steelmaking have disappeared or shrunk. The country fell 10 places in the decade to 2024 to rank 74th on Harvard's Economic Complexity Index; of the OECD countries, only Chile has a lower score. Mining and banking account for around 60% of the domestic stock market capitalisation.

Yet that ignores the growing financial and existential fears about AI that have now spread to Firmus' US rival CoreWeave CRWV.O: on Wednesday its shares slumped 15% and its bonds due in 2032 traded below 80 cents on the dollar. Moreover, Firmus had heaps of red flags too, the biggest being backer Coatue Management cutting its IPO commitment by 90% to $100 million last week, the AFR reported.

Those factors would have understandably scared off the country's pension, or superannuation, funds that manage A$4.8 trillion ($3.3 trillion) of assets. While they have a reputation for being risk-averse, they have readily backed scrappy mining startups and fintech firms and some have ploughed money into unlisted data centre outfits like AirTrunk and CDC Data Centres. They have also been crying out for decent-sized IPOs. Firmus would have been the biggest ASX listing this millennium by almost 40%.

It's not as if Curtis, who a decade ago was jailed for insider trading, or his bankers - Bank of America, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley and Morgans Financial - were blissfully unaware of these conflicting dynamics. Yet they still tried to garner an IPO valuation triple Firmus' worth in an August funding round for a company with a minuscule track record, little revenue and a convicted criminal in the C-suite. If Curtis wants to revisit an IPO any time soon - perhaps on the Nasdaq - he'd better start dining on some humble pie.

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CONTEXT NEWS

Firmus Technologies co-founder and co-CEO Oliver Curtis said that the failure of the neocloud company's IPO was "a missed opportunity for Australia, to be brutally honest". He made the comments on October 11 to Liam Mendes, a reporter from The Australian newspaper who tracked him down on the way to a meeting in Singapore.

Curtis also said: "It's about Australia understanding ultimately we should be a homegrown hero, manufacture amazing technology with an amazing pipeline of opportunity...it is disappointing that Australia decided that there was a mantra of disbelief...Australia will, generally, take dim views on people taking a risk."

Australian billionaire and Firmus investor James Packer echoed Curtis' comments on October 13, telling The Australian that "Australia tends to tear down aggressive entrepreneurs and America builds them up."

(Editing by Robyn Mak; Production by Aditya Srivastav)