Magic Circle firm Clifford Chance will represent Rio Tinto as it faces legal action in Australia over allegedly misleading investors about the coal reserves of a Mozambique mining company it acquired for $4 billion in 2011.
Australia’s largest agribusiness, AWB Harvest Finance Pools Pty Ltd, has agreed to make changes to the contracts it uses with farmers after the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission flagged terms of its contracts for being unfair.
The Bank of Queensland has reached a settlement close to trial in a class action brought by investors in a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme masterminded by jailed scammer Bradley Sherwin.
It warned offenders, and then it won its first case. Now with the one-year anniversary of laws protecting small businesses from unfair contracts ticking over, expect the consumer regulator to take no prisoners, lawyers say.