Companies and other defendants forked over big sums last year to settle more than 20 class actions, with a total of at least $734 million being paid out. Here are the top 10 class action settlements and the law firms and funders that negotiated them.
A magistrate has dismissed a bid to expand the cross examination of a JPMorgan witness in the closely watched criminal cartel case over a $2.5 billion ANZ share placement, calling it a “back door” attempt to bypass a prior court ruling.
A committal hearing in the ANZ cartel case may run a further nine days next year due to ongoing arguments about subpoenas and privilege, which have derailed five planned days of cross-examination of key witnesses and led a Local Court Magistrate to proclaim she was “awful close” to ending her life.
The banks and executives facing criminal charges over alleged cartel conduct related to ANZ’s $2.5 billion share placement in 2015 will fight to widen their cross-examination of key ACCC witnesses after new information was brought to light in late submissions by the regulator.
A key witness from JPMorgan previously contested claims by the ACCC that a key component of an alleged cartel arrangement between four major banks around a $2.5 billion institutional share placement by ANZ was actually an ‘agreement,’ as opposed to a series of independent decisions, a court has heard.
Two key witnesses from JPMorgan have been grilled by lawyers for three major investments banks named in a high-stakes criminal cartel case as the banks seek to cast doubt on how the ACCC gathered evidence during its almost two-year cartel investigation.
The banks and executives at the centre of a landmark criminal cartel case can question four ACCC investigators and witnesses from JP Morgan at an upcoming committal hearing, with a magistrate saying Friday there were “substantial reasons in the interests of justice” to allow the cross-examination.
The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority will not challenge a Federal Court ruling that dismissed its case against fund manager IOOF as “unpersuasive”, “fundamentally inadequate” and “tenuous in the extreme”.
An investigation by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has come under fire by the banks and directors targeted in a criminal case over alleged cartel conduct that claim the regulator “contaminated” key evidence and improperly used material supplied by ASIC.
Lawyers for former Citigroup executive Stephen Roberts have complained that prosecutors have failed to provide a “shred of material” to explain his alleged involvement in a criminal cartel relating to ANZ’s $2.5 billion capital raising, as the defendants fight to grill Crown witnesses before trial.