Marcus Catsaras: Where did a former recording studio manager get $2 million to bankroll teal MPs?

Voters trying to decipher the impact of rich donors might consider the curious case of the 31-year-old Marcus Catsaras, who over a few years has risen from managing the Cat’s Ass Studio to outspending billionaires on politicians.

When six “teal” independent MPs, Kate Cheney, Zoe Daniel, Monique Ryan, Sophie Scamps, Allegra Spender and Zali Steggall, seek re-reelection this year, much of their campaigns will be paid for Mr Catsaras, a Tokyo-based weather trader involved in two modest-sized climate-connected businesses.

Over the past two years Mr Catsaras was a bigger election donor than billionaires Gina Rinehart, Australia’s richest person, or property developer Harry Triguboff, founder of the Meriton apartment-building group, according to figures from the Australian Electoral Commission.

Mr Catsaras’ contribution of $1,999,978 was only $10,522 less than those made by Visy Industries chairman Anthony Pratt, another billionaire whose family has funded both main political parties over generations.

So, as polls point to a hung parliament, who is this potential parliamentary kingmaker? Given transparency in politics is one of the teals’ stated primary objectives, The Nightly decided to try and solve the mystery.

We failed. The basis of his wealth, based on public information, is inexplicable, which raises a pertinent question for the teals: should not transparency extend to their donors?

One interview

Mr Catsaras seems to have given only one media interview, a year ago. He was described as the chief investment officer of StepChange, a Japanese company which trades electricity on futures markets by predicting the weather. The firm’s software is apparently so accurate it is sold commercially.

“Across the world people like us step in and do the work figuring out what the likelihood is of a meteorological event happening, or when people will charge their Teslas,” Mr Catsaras told the Australian Financial Review last January. “It’s all about getting efficient markets.”

If StepChange does sell software, its marketing budget is modest. The company’s two-page website has no phone number, staff names or mention of services for sale. The Nightly could find no mentions of StepChange’s weather-forecasting software on the internet or in other media publications.

StepChange’s LinkedIn page states it has “a world class quantitative team designing sophisticated trading products” with between two and ten employees. Small firms can be highly profitable, but global demand is so great for quantitative traders - people who design complex mathematical formula to beat the financial markets - that employers are forced to pay big salaries and heavily promote themselves.

On the internet, StepChange is so low profile it looks like a ghost.

Climate fund

Mr Catsaras’ other business provides more information. He is the managing partner of Aethra, a fund that invests in climate projects. While some of the projects are conventional plays on government subsidies, including a large battery in Canberra with two-hours charge, others are so unusual they sound like science fiction.

One of the investments, Terraform Industries, is working on technology it says can turn sunlight and air into natural gas.

At this stage, Aethra looks too small to fund big political donations. The fund had $20 million a year ago, the Financial Review reported. Even highly successful funds are generally limited to 2 per cent management fees a year, which would be $400,000 before tax for Aethra.

Aethra also operates as a charity, which would lower its returns. The fund’s website discloses that Aethra is a Climate 200 donor, although presents the relationship like an investment, stating it provided “some of the earliest capital in C200”.

Even though Climate 200 is legally a company, it is run as a political charity. About 20 per cent of its donations over the past two years came from Mr Catsaras.

Holiday in Sicily

Very little is known about his personal background. He is from Sydney and attended the Berklee College of Music, a private college in Boston, where he took a degree in film scoring from 2012 to 2016. Before Aethra and StepChange, he set up Bitcast, a now-defunct business that helped people share podcast clips. He also managed a recording studio in Avoca Beach, north of Sydney, called Cat’s Ass Studio.

Corporate records show a man of the same name and similar age has owned four Australian businesses. All have been deregistered, and none filed any accounts.

For reasons that are unclear his Instagram account uses the name Marcus Sonoma. The few posts include what look like a family holiday photos from Sicily. In one photo, with his arm around Mr Catsaras, is the Australian actor Luke Cook with his wife and celebrity stylist Kara Cook.

His interest in climate change goes back at least to the COVID pandemic. In 2022 Mr Catsaras posted three professionally produced videos on his YouTube account promoting new technologies that might slow global warming. Known as solar radiation removal, they include spraying tiny particles into clouds to reflect the sun.

The YouTube account also refers to him as Marcus Sonoma. Rather than call him an investor, the personal description on the account says: “I write and produce CGI (computer generated) films on Carbon Removal.”

Mr Catsaras did not response to several messages from The Nightly about his political donations. But in a video posted on Instagram a week ago he said he supported the politicians because spending on climate change mitigation would save the world money in the long run.

“So I’m super super super proud to support those guys,” he said.