ASIC

A judge has approved a $35 million penalty against HSBC in ASIC’s novel case over the bank's scam protection failures, despite questioning whether the punishment was severe enough given how long the case took to settle.

HSBC has agreed to pay a $35 million penalty in ASIC proceedings after it admitted to serious failures in protecting customers from scams, but a judge is questioning whether the penalty is high enough. 

A judge has ordered the former CEO and chief legal officer of Star to pay a combined $1.1 million in penalties for failing to act on "obvious" money laundering risks, but said the fines would have been higher had ASIC not struck a "generous" settlement with other directors.

The Law Council says asserting legal professional privilege is not "inherently scandalous", ahead of a parliamentary hearing on KPMG's sharing ofclient information, at which law firms Allens and Ashurst are expected to stay mum.

Kicking off its case against former Noumi CEO Rory Macleod, ASIC has told the court that Macleod was clearly aware of the "dramatic" difference between actual available stock and what was reported to the market in 2019 and 2020.

An executive director at ASIC has said the High Court has “opened the door” for regulators to rely on a new way to prove corporate wrongdoing that does not require establishing that individuals within a company had a wrongful intent or relevant knowledge. 

A judge has questioned whether Macquarie Financial should get 70 per cent of an interim $102 million distribution to people who sank their retirement savings into Keystone’s Shield Master Fund, which is being investigated for misuse of investor funds.

Defunct forex broker Union Standard and its former agents have been hit with a combined $300.2 million penalty for “egregious” contraventions, including deliberately pushing risky derivative contracts onto inexperienced investors.

Lendlease has dropped KPMG as its auditor, after it was revealed under parliamentary privilege that the firm misused the developer's confidential client data. 

A lawyer for ASIC has told a judge that $300 million in Shield Master Fund investments intended for property developments appear to have been diverted for other purposes.