Chinese lender Aoyin wants to join Baker McKenzie to its claims against PwC over a failed bid to launch the first Chinese bank incorporated in Australia, after advice documents from the law firm were uncovered in a last-minute privilege fight.
The Australian Taxation Office has told a judge it would be prepared to “give comfort” to PricewaterhouseCoopers that it will not prosecute the accounting giant for tax offences relating to documents at the centre of a court battle over privilege.
PricewaterhouseCoopers has won access to communications between a Chinese lender and its lawyers at Baker McKenzie in a legal stoush over a failed bid to launch the first Chinese bank incorporated in Australia.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has taken the Commonwealth Bank of Australia to court for slapping nearly 1 million customers with unauthorised monthly access fees totaling $55 million over a nine-year period.
The judge considering the $50 million settlement reached in the shareholder class action against failed training company Vocation and auditor PricewaterhouseCoopers has signalled his likely approval of the deal, but wants a senior lawyer to tell the court why the funding commission is reasonable.
PricewaterhouseCoopers is looking to shut down a class action by irate bondholders of collapsed asset finance lender Axsesstoday Limited over alleged misrepresentations in a $50 million bond offer.
Bondholders of Axsesstoday are seeking to expand their claims in a class action against the collapsed asset finance lender and its accountant PricewaterhouseCoopers, alleging PwC kept investors in the dark about a spike in the company’s arrears ratio prior to issuing a $50 million bond prospectus.
Assurances that PwC can be a defendant in a privilege fight with the ATO while representing three other defendants in the proceedings and avoid a conflict of interest has failed to allay concerns raised by a Federal Court judge, who said the situation created “at least an appearance of tension”.
Shareholders of collapsed vocational training company Vocation are poised to get about half of a $50 million settlement reached last month in a complex, long-running class action alleging the company failed to make adequate disclosures about its contracts with the Victorian Department of Education.
A court battle between the Australian Taxation Office and PricewaterhouseCoopers over the scope of legal professional privilege claimed by one of its major clients, meat processing giant JBS Australia, has hit a preliminary snag over the consulting giant’s representation of JBS, with a judge warning he might compel the company and its subsidiaries to engage independent lawyers.