Two home finance companies and their father-son directors have been hit with $150,000 in penalties after a judge found they failed to cooperate with the Australian Financial Complaints Authority in an ASIC enforcement action and subjected AFCA staff to “inappropriate and unprofessional behaviour.”
Wood-fibre processor and exporter Midway Limited has been hit with a $33,000 penalty after the Australian Securities and Investments Commission alleged it failed to disclose a revenue downturn to shareholders.
ASIC commissioner Sean Hughes will step down next month after taking a role with investment manager Vanguard – which paid a $40,000 fine to the corporate watchdog just last month.
Hitting back at ASIC’s claims it misled investors and breached disclosure rules, technology company Nuix says it had no knowledge it was failing to meet its FY21 forecast and didn’t need to disclose to investors draft documents showing missed internal targets.
A judge has vacated an upcoming trial in shareholder class actions against former Quintis director Frank Wilson and Ernst & Young, after learning judgment in similar ASIC proceedings against Wilson will not be delivered before the class action hearing kicks off.
Retail giant Harvey Norman and consumer credit provider Latitude Finance have hit back at ASIC claims that they ran misleading ads for interest-free finance, saying reasonable consumers would have known additional conditions were laid out in the ads’ fine print.
A former director of Spaceship Capital Limited has succeeded in overturning a banning order imposed by ASIC, with a tribunal finding he may have been kept in the dark about the software bug that led to the ban.
The founder of investment group Mayfair 101 must foot half his costs of a successful appeal of a 20-year ban on fund raising because of the many “spurious” grounds of appeal he pressed.
A $1.5 million class action settlement against failed logistics provider GetSwift, which a judge termed a “disaster”, has been revised down to $1 million and may face a liquidators’ challenge that could see a group members recover nothing.
Gold Coast ‘finfluencer’ Tyson Scholz 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, a judge has found.