When the leader of a public company says they crave a lower profile they generally mean the opposite. Wes Maas is a genuine exception. The 46-year-old's evolution from professional rugby league player to Dubbo-based billionaire is the kind of backstory corporate Australia salivates over, and yet he appears no more comfortable in the spotlight than when he first debuted as a prop for the South Sydney Rabbitohs in 2002.
Maas is softly spoken, hard to track down and blushes at prying questions. Unfortunately for him, there are many swirling around his $2.5 billion company, Maas Group, particularly as to why he sold its best performing construction arm to go all in on the artificial intelligence infrastructure gold rush. Maas is the founder, chief executive and majority shareholder, which means the questions are his alone to answer.
"I would prefer no stories to be perfectly honest," he says after finally agreeing to be interviewed by Rampart in September. "I know that's not what you'd like to print but I'd prefer to be under the radar."
The thing is, Maas has never really been under the radar. He's 191 centimetres tall, for starters, and amassed a cult-like following in the central west of New South Wales years before Maas Group went public in 2020. He also owns swathes of land across Dubbo, Orange and Bathurst via the company's property arm, making him one of the area’s biggest landlords.
Maas' ability to pass a ball, and to build a multi-billion dollar business from one bobcat and a tip truck in 2002, are somehow now the least interesting things about him. The sale of the construction arm has been a lightning rod to his contentious view that Maas Group's line of business is investing, not industry. It's an explanation that doesn’t fly with some institutional shareholders who argue that’s their job.
Over the past year Maas has poured almost half a billion dollars into AI infrastructure business Firmus, and like everything else the AI factory touches, it's proved controversial. Firmus is on the brink of the biggest ASX listing in decades, but there are just as many Maas Group investors convinced he's thrown the best of his 24-year-old business away as those celebrating their incredible paper gains from the AI boom.
