A former director of defunct financial services company Linchpin Capital, who is facing a class action as well as civil penalty proceedings by ASIC, can’t put the brakes on his challenge to a five-year disqualification order by the regulator.
A judge overseeing the misconduct trial in the Banksia Securities class action has rejected a bid by a lawyer for the deceased cost consultant in the case to separately determine whether a cause of action survives his death.
The son of Banksia class action funder Mark Elliott, who has been accused of complicity in a fraudulent scheme to maximise the profits of the lawyers in the case, was young and inexperienced and didn’t know his father’s conduct was wrong, his barrister has told a court.
A routine practice by the funder behind the scandal-ridden Banksia class action of deleting emails, documented in a letter by his solicitors just days before his death, isn’t consistent with the electronic record maintained in another class action in which he was involved, a court overseeing a trial in the case has heard.
A judge has set aside the pleadings in ASIC’s case accusing a Worrells liquidator of aiding and abetting the illegal phoenix activity of collapsed Queensland property investment advisor Members Alliance Group, saying he is entitled to a “coherent pleading”.
An offer by billionaire Clive Palmer to pay $21 million for all remaining shares in villas at the Palmer Coolum Resort in Queensland and drop 14 lawsuits over resort ownership has been rejected by villa owners.
A judge has found that auditor Ernst & Young cannot rely on the privilege against self-incrimination in a lawsuit brought over its audits of failed financial services firm LM Investment Management.
James Mawhinney, director of the besieged Mayfair Group, has lost his bid to slow down two proceedings filed by ASIC which he claims will have a “catastrophic” effect on his business, staff and investors.
AIG has settled a lawsuit brought by Kaboko Mining against several former directors alleging they failed to exploit commercial opportunities, after the insurer failed to convince an appeals court that an insolvency exclusion in the company’s D&O policy should exempt it from covering the claims.
Over-the-counter derivative issuers AGM Markets, OT Markets and Oxifin Tech have been ordered to pay a total of $75 million in penalties after a ruling that they engaged in unconscionable conduct causing losses of over $30 million to unsophisticated investors seeking what a judge called “financial heroin hits”.