ACCC

Accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers is facing claims of professional negligence by insolvent tertiary education provider Cornerstone for allegedly assisting the company’s former director in overstating the company’s revenue and unlawfully extinguishing his debt.

A former JPMorgan managing director has said the three investment banks at the centre of an alleged cartel made individual decisions to trade “gently” in ANZ shares but were conscious of their fellow underwriters’ risks following a botched share placement in 2015.

Pharmaceutical ingredient producer Alkaloids of Australia has pleaded guilty to cartel conduct over the supply of a key chemical found in generic stomach cramp drugs.

The High Court has rejected Volkswagen’s special leave application to challenge a record $125 million penalty for selling cars with a defeat device that allowed them to cheat on emissions tests.

One of the world’s leading audio branding companies has agreed to amend its contract terms, which penalised customers for cancelling within a 42-day period of their contract ending, following an investigation by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

A judge said he “gagged” at the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission’s proposed $5 million pecuniary penalty in its case against specialist workplace relations company Employsure over six misleading Google ads.

The ACCC’s practice of successively refining witness statements without saving draft versions was “quite unfair”, says a judge overseeing the competition regulator’s criminal cartel case over a botched ANZ share placement.

A judge has declined to quash the indictment in a high-profile criminal case over a $2.5 billion ANZ share placement but sent prosecutors back to the drawing board to remedy its defects, calling the state of affairs “a complete shemozzle”.

JPMorgan’s general counsel for Australia and New Zealand was allowed to sit in on witness interviews during an ACCC cartel investigation into ANZ’s $2.5 billion share placement despite allegedly being involved in the cartel conduct, a judge has heard.

A judge has rejected part of IVF provider Virtus Health’s bid for redactions in a recent decision from the court temporarily blocking the company from purchasing rival Adora Fertility, saying some of the confidentiality claims were “staggering” and “border on ridiculous.”