ASIC acting chair Karen Chester has labelled ‘opaque’ the disclosures made to commissioners a year before controversial rental assistance payments to the regulator’s outgoing deputy chair Daniel Crennan QC were made public, and said the payments would have raised a red flag.
Two more law firms have been joined to a lawsuit by defunct financial advisor Dover Financial accusing three law firms of providing negligent advice regarding an inaptly titled client protection policy which a judge found was “highly misleading” and “an exercise in Orwellian doublespeak”.
Former BitConnect promoter John Bigatton has been charged with a raft of cryptocurrency-related offences, including operating an unregistered managed investment scheme and making false or misleading statements to investors.
A judge has said she was “currently minded” to sign off on a scheme of arrangement that would see last-mile logistics software firm GetSwift relocate to Canada, but has sought further submissions on whether any Australian civil penalties sought against the company by ASIC would be enforceable in the Canadian courts.
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.
Murray Goulburn’s former managing director Gary Helou and chief financial officer Brad Hingle have been disqualified from heading up companies after they were found to have breached the Corporations Act for their role in the milk supplier’s repeated failure to disclose an expected material decrease in the milk supplier’s earnings guidance for 2016.
A judge said Friday that a bid by last-mile logistics software firm GetSwift to relocate to Canada as it faces a potential $20 million civil penalty from ASIC and a $50 million class action was “not a good look”.
Last-mile logistics software firm GetSwift has offered a last minute undertaking that it will be covered for any judgments and penalties in a class action and ASIC case, after a judge expressed concerns about the company’s bid to redomicile to Canada amid the ongoing litigation.
The corporate regulator is pushing for a three-year director ban against former Murray Goulburn managing director Gary Helou and a two-year disqualification order against the dairy cooperative’s former chief financial officer over misleading representations about farmgate milk prices five years ago.
The Federal Court’s top judge has cautioned ASIC and insurers Allianz and AWP against presenting a “bastardised form of pleading” in the financial watchdog’s action over the alleged misleading sale of travel insurance to over 31,000 consumers.