Coal mining firm TerraCom has lost its Full Court bid to shield a PricewaterhouseCoopers report from ASIC, on appeal from a judgment which found the regulator could view the report because of public statements made by the company.
ASIC has renewed its bid to see a PricewaterhouseCoopers report commissioned by TerraCom in order to defend the coal mining company’s appeal of a judgment that found the regulator could view the report because of public statements made by the company.
Coal mining firm TerraCom has taken its bid to shield a PricewaterhouseCoopers report from ASIC to the Full Court, appealing a judgment which found the regulator could view the report because of public statements made by the company.
Advice from non-lawyers and “routed” through a legal practitioner at multidisciplinary partnership PricewaterhouseCoopers cannot be shielded under legal professional privilege, the Federal Court has found.
A judge has rejected the Australian Taxation Office’s claim that legal professional privilege does not apply to any communications between PricewaterhouseCoopers and its client, meat processor JBS, but has found that many of the reviewed documents do not satisfy the test of privilege.
Mining company TerraCom has lost a case seeking to shield a report by PricewaterhouseCoopers from the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, which is investigating claims current and former executives falsified coal quality results.
Five enforcement officers of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission will be cross-examined by lawyers for banks facing price fixing charges over their conduct following ANZ’s $2.5 billion capital raising six years ago.
A judge overseeing a cartel case over a $2.5 billion ANZ share placement has granted ANZ’s bid for unredacted documents which the bank says will support its claims that the case should be permanently stayed because of improper dealings between whistleblower JPMorgan, ASIC and the ACCC.
Assessing claims of privilege involving multidisciplinary firms like PricewaterhouseCoopers that offer legal and accounting services is “inherently awkward”, a court heard on the final day of a hearing in a privilege battle between the accounting firm and the ATO.
A PwC partner who the ATO claims was assigned to work on a matter for meat processing company JBS to bring a “cloak of legal privilege” kept a supporting role on the brief despite the company CFO’s dissatisfaction, a court has heard.