The director of Forum Finance, which has been accused by Westpac and Societe Generale of a $263 million fraud, is in Europe and will return to Australia over the weekend, although he has refused to tell his lawyer his exact location, a court has heard.
Law firm HWL Ebsworth says it has avoided any negative financial impact from its connection with Sydney financial firm Forum Finance, which has been accused by Westpac of a $263 million fraud.
Four executives of the failed Arrium have named auditor KPMG as a “concurrent wrongdoer” in defending a shareholder class action over a $754 million capital raising two years prior to the mining and steel giant’s $2 billion collapse.
Westpac and French investment bank Societe Generale have obtained freezing orders over $263 million in assets in fraud cases brought against a Sydney software firm and its director, with a court hearing that other financial institutions may also be at risk from the alleged fraud.
Canadian trader Daniel Schlaepfer has suffered a loss in his $10 million defamation case against ASIC, with an appeals court tossing the lawsuit despite finding the regulator defamed him and his firm by accusing them of unlawful market manipulation.
Law firms are ordering staff in their Sydney offices to work from home if possible and avoid face-to-face meetings as the state’s new rules requiring masks at all indoor workplaces takes effect.
Former PricewaterhouseCoopers director Jennifer Whittaker has resolved her lawsuit with the accounting giant on the eve of trial, leaving questions about the validity of termination notices by DocuSign for a future case.
A judge has thrown out trade mark infringement claims brought by AGL against Greenpeace for using the energy company’s logo in a public campaign labelling it “Australia’s biggest climate polluter”.
Class actions are the next battleground following Thursday’s Federal Court ruling that the government owes a duty of care to protect children from the risks of climate change, according to a number of legal experts.
The federal Minister for the Environment owes a duty of care to children who could suffer “catastrophic” harms from increased greenhouse gas emissions that would result from approving the expansion of Whitehaven’s Vickery coal mine, a judge has ruled.