Deloitte has won its bid to keep confidential documents away from the funder backing a consolidated shareholder class against food company Noumi which alleges the auditor was complicit in misleading the market.
PwC partners are facing “very serious” allegations that they had actual knowledge that a $30 million dividend payment to the director of now defunct tertiary education provider Cornerstone was unlawful.
The Australian Taxation Office has finalised its protocol for dealing with claims of legal professional privilege, developed in response to large companies asserting “reckless” privilege claims which the ATO says obstruct its investigations.
The founder of wholesale food company Hudson Pacific has sued PricewaterhouseCoopers for allegedly providing bad advice on the terms of the $88 million sale of his business to Retail Food Group in 2016.
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.
Embattled wealth advisor Dixon Advisory has filed for administration, saying its potential liability in two class actions and a $7.2 million penalty it agreed to pay in ASIC proceedings mean it is likely to become insolvent in the future.
The liquidator of collapsed vocational education provider Careers Australia has filed a lawsuit against the company’s former directors, including founding CEO of Optus Robert Mansfield, seeking damages for alleged insolvent trading and breach of directors’ duties over a $40 million dividend the company allegedly could not afford.