Regulators

Fashion retailer Mosaic Brands has denied claims by the consumer cop that it failed to deliver hundreds of thousands of products to customers within advertised time frames, saying the delays were reasonable given COVID-19 and the failures of logistics and delivery partners, including Australia Post. 

The corporate regulator has secrued orders barring fintech giant PayPal from enforcing a term in its contracts with small businesses that set a two-month deadline for complaints about excess fees.

Industrial technology company Delta Building Automation has appealed a $1.5 million penalty for attempting to rig a bid for construction work on the National Gallery of Australia, a penalty five times the amount it claimed it should face.

Lendlease’s plan to sell a portfolio of residential community projects to Stockland for $1.3 billion has raised concerns for the ACCC, which worries the transaction may substantially lessen competition in the supply of residential masterplanned community housing lots in four regions.

A Senate committee has release a damning report blasting the Australian Securities and Investments Commission as a failed regulator that should be broken up.

The ACCC has accepted undertakings from Telstra and Optus not to renew agreements requiring them to pre-install Google apps on Android devices as part of its competition probe into Google.

The Australian provider of the Kraken crypto exchange has told a court that its margin trading product is not a credit facility, rejecting the corporate regulator’s “overly broad” definition of the word ‘credit’. 

Law firm HWL Ebsworth is facing a representative complaint filed with the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner over a 2023 cyber attack, which allegedly compromised the data of 65 government agencies and affected NDIS participants. 

Defunct microloan company Ferratum has been hit with $16 million in penalties for overcharging low-income consumers during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, with a judge noting the company’s conduct affected a large number of vulnerable customers.

A former ATO worker who accused his employer of using heavy handed debt collection tactics against taxpayers has lost his second bid for immunity from prosecution, with an appeals court finding that whistleblowing laws only protect the disclosure itself.