A Federal Court judge has slapped Volkswagen with a record $125 million penalty over its emissions cheating scandal after expressing outrage at a āmanifestly inadequateā $75 million settlement agreement reached with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
Westpac is facing a class action on behalf shareholders in three countries over its alleged anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing breaches and disclosures.
The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority has flagged potentially “substantial gaps in risk governance” by Westpac as it formally kicked off an investigation into the bank and its executives for potential breaches of the Banking Act.
The head of Australia’s largest unlisted insurance broker, Coverforce, may face a future damages claim for misleading or deceptive conduct if a recent acquisition of former Suncorp unit Resilium is not reversed, a court has found.
AUSTRAC’s lawsuit against Westpac over 23 million alleged breaches of money laundering and counter-terrorism laws is racing towards a possible February penalty hearing, with the bank largely in agreement with the regulator on its liability.
A judge has consolidated competing shareholder class actions against builder Lendlease brought by rival plaintiffs law firms, but has rejected the firms’ bid to jointly run the litigation and says one of them must go.
A judge is considering whether he can increase a record $75 million civil penalty settlement reached by Volkswagen and the ACCC over the dieselgate scandal, after saying the people of Australia would be āupsetā if they knew about some of the āoutrageousā terms to which the consumer watchdog had agreed.
A challenge by Quinn Emanuel to a NSW Supreme Court decision staying its shareholder class action against AMP has been unanimously dismissed by the Court of Appeal, which found the class action beauty contest was not decided in error and that subsequently filed representative proceedings were not an abuse of process.
Volkswagen is nearing the end of the road in the dieselgate scandal in Australia, as the car company agrees to an in-principle resoltion of enforcement action by the ACCC while also finalising the details of the settlement of five class actions worth up to $127 million.
The plaintiffs firms running rival shareholder class actions against construction giant Lendlease have pitched a proposal to join their competing cases, a plan that should find favour with the judge overseeing the cases, who recently forced the consolidation of three duplicate class actions against failed engineering firm RCR Tomlinson.