UGL shareholders that signed up to a class action against the engineering company over disclosures related to its Ichthys power plant contract will get less than half of an $18 million settlement, even after the litigation funder takes a steep cut to its 30 per cent commission and the plaintiff’s firm caps its fees.
The funder backing a shareholder class action against Woolworths wants a 35 percent slice of any settlement or judgment in the $100 million case, according to its agreement with the applicants.
A groundbreaking class action ruling by the Federal Court on Thursday that found Myer misled shareholders and accepted the applicant’s market-based causation theory is the only judgment in an Australian securities class action since the first shareholder case was brought 20 years ago, and it might be the only one for years to come.
A judge has ruled that department store Myer engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct and breached its continuous disclosure obligations when it failed to correct its “inflated” 2015 net profit forecasts, but said shareholders may not have suffered any loss flowing from the breaches, in a monumental decision that also found investors do not always need to prove direct reliance on misrepresentations in claiming damages in class actions.
The costs of Westpac’s customer remediation for the 2019 financial year will approach $1 billion, the bank said Wednesday, as it revealed to the market a $341 million dent in its cash earnings for the second half of the year as part of its ongoing repayment program.
The competition watchdog has given the greenlight to US cold storage giant Emergent Cold’s proposed takeover of rival Australian compay AB Oxford after raising preliminary concerns the deal would hike up prices.
A judge’s decision refusing to approve a $42 million settlement in a shareholder class action against Murray Goulburn because of a “too high” funder’s commission has set the stage for a showdown over the power of courts to alter funding agreements, a battle potentially more consequential than the fight over common fund orders now before the High Court.
Flight Centre has agreed to hand over $252,000 in penalties after the consumer watchdog slapped the travel giant with infringement notices for holiday promotions that potentially duped customers.
A judge has signed off on a settlement of a long-running class action against Westpac unit BankSA, and has ruled the law firm that brought the case has an equitable right to unpaid legal costs for investigating the case before it found a funder.
Ex-Tennis Australia director and current Dentons partner Steve Healy, who is facing action by the corporate regulator over the broadcast rights to the Australian Open, has lost a bid for access to six years of emails between two other former board members.