Competition & Consumer Protection

Approved settlements in class actions since the regime was enacted are set to top $8 billion this year, according to a new report ranking the busiest litigation funders, which found most class action mega settlements were not funder backed.

Last year saw the lowest number of new class action filings in Australia since 2016, according to a new report.

The authorised representative of forex broker Union Standard can’t exclude parts of an opinion by an ASIC-appointed expert in a case alleging it traded in margin products with Chinese clients despite knowing it was illegal under Chinese law.

KPMG has hit back at a shareholder class action over allegedly misleading statements made ahead of CuDeco’s collapse in 2020, placing blame on the defunct mining company, its directors and group members themselves. 

Gold Coast ‘finfluencer’ Tyson Scholz has been permanently barred from conducting a financial services business without a license, after a court found he provided illegal financial services by giving tips on his Instagram account and to customers who paid for access to his seminars and ‘Black Wolf Pit’ chat room.

Award-wining architecture firm Ashton Raggatt McDougall and its former boss have agreed to pay a combined $975,000 in penalties for attempting to rig bids on a $250 million building project at Charles Darwin University.

Carnival has won its bid to strike out a class action over norovirus outbreaks on its Sun Princess cruise ship. 

Bayer told a jury that clinical trials from the 1990’s to 2014 showed its Essure birth control device was “safe and efficacious”, as the pharmaceutical giant faces trial in a class action by patients who claim they suffered debilitating injuries from the device.

BlueScope Steel spent $27 million defending the ACCC’s claims that it engaged in serious cartel conduct in relation to the supply of flat steel products in Australia, and its apologies came too late to warrant a penalty discount, a court has heard.

The head of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has called for reforms to Australia’s merger laws that would make review by the regulator compulsory, saying the current  informal review regime hampers its ability to block anti-competitive deals.