APRA’s purely documentary case against troubled fund manager IOOF has been dismissed by the Federal Court as “unpersuasive”, “fundamentally inadequate” and “tenuous in the extreme”, in another major blow to financial services regulators pursuing action in the wake of the banking royal commission.
US investment manager State Street Global Advisors claims it lost out on royalties when Maurice Blackburn commissioned an allegedly infringing replica of its iconic Fearless Girl statue in New York City, a marketing phenomenon that has been estimated to be valued at up to $38.6 million.
Lawyers for former Vocation CEO Mark Hutchinson say the corporate regulator is “plucking numbers out of the air” in its bid to secure disqualifications of up to eight years against the former executives who breached their directors’ duties in relation to the collapsed education provider.
Lawyers for IOOF chief financial officer David Coulter have dismissed APRA’s allegations that he breached his superannuation duties as commercially “naïve”, “absolutely desperate” and a “most egregious example” of impulsive regulatory enforcement action.
In a win for the corporate watchdog, a court has found collapsed education provider Vocation engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct and breached its continuous disclosure obligations by failing to inform shareholders of problems with a large government contract.