BlueScope Steel general manager Jason Ellis wanted no record kept of a meeting with four of the company’s competing steel distributors and warned his national sales manager to keep the talks under wraps, a court hearing the ACCC’s price-fixing case was told on Thursday.
BlueScope has labelled “delusional” an argument by the competition regulator that alleged correspondence from a distributor about the steel company’s suggested higher prices was evidence of price-fixing.
Steel maker Bluescope’s claim that it didn’t engage in cartel conduct because it only encouraged distributors to set a price for its products would “eviscerate” cartel laws, the ACCC has told a court.
Sydney’s ongoing COVID-19 lockdown has created “logistical” difficulties delaying the release of a long awaited judgment in the ACCC’s consumer law case against collapsed private college Phoenix Institute, which was accused of misleading students through the marketing of its courses.
Pharmaceutical giant Bristol-Myers Squibb will fight a case brought by Merck Sharp & Dohme alleging misuse of market power over stage IV melanoma treatments, telling the Federal Court on Friday it denied its rival’s claims.
A court has shut down the latest legal spat between the children of one of Australia’s richest families, finding a lawsuit over a $200 million real estate transaction was not brought in good faith and that running the case was not in the best interests of the company involved in the deal.
The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission has appealed a judge’s decision throwing out its competition case over an agreement for the privatisation of two NSW ports, calling the case “a matter of significance for the Australian economy”.
Westpac has been ordered to pay $3 million after two subsidiaries admitted misleading hundreds of superannuation customers about the financial adviser fees they were charged, a penalty that took into account the Big Four bank’s massive profits.
The ACCC’s claim that NSW Ports stymied competition when it signed a 50-year agreement with the state to be compensated if the Port of Newcastle built a container terminal was based on “mere speculative hopes”, a judge found in tossing the competition watchdog’s regulatory action.
A Sydney law firm that brought a class action against Boston Scientific over allegedly defective pelvic mesh products has agreed to stay its case while a class action by Shine Lawyers moves ahead.