The liquidators for Halifax Investment Services were justified in reaching a compromise settlement in proceedings against King & Wood Mallesons alleging the firm and former auditor Bentleys failed to advise the defunct stockbroker that it had to hold client funds used to trade on its online platform on trust, a judge has found.
Clayton Utz has snagged a big fish from Baker McKenzie, luring the head of the US firm’s restructuring and insolvency practice group.
KPMG has won its application for the High Court to weigh in on the relevance of a contingency fee order in determining a bid to transfer a shareholder class action from Victoria to NSW.
A judge has ordered a litigation funder bankrolling an investor class action against Virgin Australia to show evidence it can meet a $10 million agreed indemnity with the airline, saying it was not being transparent about its financial position.
A former director of Melbourne-based developer Steller Developments has denied liquidators’ claims that he agreed to give a $120 million personal guarantee before the company went under, saying there was “not one single contemporaneous document” referring to the alleged guarantee.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has won sequestration orders against Gold Coast ‘finfluencer’ Tyson Scholz after he failed to pay the regulator’s costs in proceedings that resulted in him being permanently barred from carrying on a unlicensed financial services business.
In a case believed to be the first of its kind, the liquidators of boiler room trader Forex Capital Trading have sued ASIC, seeking to claw back over $20 million in fines and costs they says constituted unfair preference payments and should be distributed among the company’s out-of-pocket clients.
Sydney financier First Class Capital has admitted it acquired three million shares in former market darling Big Un but has denied liquidators’ claims that the purchase was part of a fraudulent design to inflate the share price ahead of the video start-up’s collapse.
A judge has refused to retroactively approve a conditional costs agreement between a liquidator and a Sydney law firm to pursue claims against a former director and employee of defunct project management firm AJW, rejecting as misconceived the claim that approval had utility only after a settlement.
A judge has given a liquidator the green light to use substituted service to serve court documents on two directors of failed iron ore producer Ochre Group whose exact whereabouts are unknown, amid concerns about transactions leading up to the company’s collapse.