The corporate watchdog’s dim view of proposals to regulate litigation funders got a mixed reaction from big players in the industry Thursday, with its position supported by foreign funders but frowned on by at least one home-grown firm.
Litigation funders should not be regulated by ASIC but by the courts, the corporate watchdog has told the Australian Law Reform Commission in response to proposals to overhaul the class action regime and subject funders to licensing requirements.
Law firm Slater and Gordon will launch a series of class actions alleging the big banks and wealth managers ripped off more than $1 billion from members of their superannuation funds.
Accounting giant Deloitte is digging in for a fight over a court order to produce documents to a shareholder class over the firm’s auditing of collapsed engineering company Hastie Group, saying partners forced to hand over the files don’t have access to them.
Supermarket giant Woolworths has been hit with a class action on behalf of investors who allegedly suffered losses when the company revised its sales and profit guidance and revealed it had been using the wrong pricing competitiveness and stock availability metrics.
An Australian mortgage investment manager has been hit with a class action, alleging it charged excessive fees on loans and made misleading representations to borrowers.
The $92 million payout to two funders that financed the recently settled S&P Global class actions shows the need for continued scrutiny of litigation funding agreements, experts say, but whether it is a sign of windfalls to come or is a ghost of commission’s past is another question.
A court has struck out defamation claims brought by embattled Quintis founder Frank Wilson against the company’s former directors over ASX statements he alleges suggested he knew about the company’s termination of a supply contract with Nestle’s dermatology unit, Galderma Laboratories.
The litigation funder that unsuccessfully sought to block a shareholder from opposing a $64 million class action settlement over the collapse of Banksia Securities is not on the hook for indemnity costs despite bringing the injunction with an ulterior motive.
A judge has struck out part of a class action against the Commonwealth Bank of Australia that alleges it kept investors in the dark about deficiencies in its systems for monitoring money laundering and terrorism financing risks, saying it wasn’t clear what the bank was expected to disclose.