A $78 million class action against National Australia Bank and Walton Construction seeking compensation for sub-contractors after the company’s collapse has halted as lawyers scramble to comply with the managed investment scheme requirements for funded class actions implemented by the Morrison government.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission says beleaguered investment group Mayfair 101 should pay a $12 million penalty after a judge found the company misled investors about its financial products.
The founder of embattled investment group Mayfair 101, James Mawhinney, has said he received legal advice approving the company’s advertising of financial products that a court has found misled investors.
Logistics company GetSwift’s settlement of a shareholder class action will see group members share in $1.5 million cash plus access to further funds and revenue raised by the company over a three-year period.
Personal lender ClearLoans has lost its bid to strike out claims in ASIC’s first case related to the COVID-19 pandemic after a judge found the regulator’s action, which accuses the lender of breaching the hardship provisions of the credit laws, was “sufficiently clear”.
New requirements that funded class actions be run as managed investment schemes will throw up myriad new questions for the courts, with lawyers predicting novel challenges by defendants and group members and an altered landscape for competing class actions.
Recent changes to the law requiring funded class actions to be registered as managed investment schemes have complicated the question of how best to resolve the multiplicity issue in two class actions brought against Freedom Foods and Deloitte.
The Commonwealth Bank will plead guilty to criminal charges following an ASIC investigation over misleading representations to customers who purchased add-on consumer credit insurance.
The former lead auditor of stockbroker Halifax Investment Services, whose 2018 collapse resulted in $200 million in investor losses, has had his registration cancelled following an application by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.
Members Equity Bank faces a potential multi-million dollar fine if it is found guilty of misleading home loan customers in the first criminal prosecution under the consumer protection provision of the ASIC Act to be tried in the Federal Court.