As it readies its civil penalty suit against tech company Nuix for trial, ASIC has flagged a possible dispute about the extent of penalty privilege pleaded by a handful of former and current directors named in the case.
A shareholder class action against software company Nuix will go ahead as planned, after a stay application threatened to put the proceeding on ice pending the outcome of a separate case brought by ASIC.
A former Nuix director has made a bid to stay a shareholder class action, which accuses the software company of failing to alert the market to red flags in the business, pending the outcome of separate proceedings by ASIC.
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.
The CDPP’s decision to drop all criminal cartel charges against two banks and four individuals in a “test case” over a $2.5 billion ANZ share placement shows the ACCC “lacks expertise and objectivity” on the financial markets and should leave them to ASIC to regulate, according to one of the former accused.
From a lengthy committal hearing challenging the ACCC’s investigatory techniques to repeated attacks on the prosecution’s indictment, an indefatigable team of barristers and lawyers across eight law firms helped bring an end to the four-year long pursuit of criminal cartel charges against three banks and six individuals over a $2.8 billion ANZ share placement.
In a stunning reversal, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecution has dropped all criminal cartel charges against two investment banks and four individuals in relation to a $2.5 billion ANZ share placement, four years after the charges were brought following an allegedly questionable investigation by the ACCC.
A senior ACCC officer has been grilled on whether staff training on criminal cartel investigations was “inadequate” while the competition regulator ran a cartel probe into ANZ’s $2.5 billion share placement in 2016.
The ACCC has been accused of running a “experimental test case” that tries to fit the shares market within the scope of the Competition and Consumer Act with its criminal cartel case against Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and several prominent banking executives over a $2.5 billion ANZ share placement.
JPMorgan Australia chairman Rob Priestley told Citigroup and Deutsche Bank executives not to “panic” about picking up a shortfall in the sale of ANZ shares, a court has heard in the ACCC’s criminal cartel case over a $2.5 billion ANZ share placement.