James Arnott

A former Mastercard business development director has admitted at trial to lying to the payments giant's finance department about the risk of 7-Eleven routing transactions to EFTPOS to seal a deal.

Trial in a case alleging Mastercard misused its market power by striking deals with retailers to defend revenues against EFTPOS routing has heard external competition lawyers suggested removing the word 'routing' from its contract with Woolworths.

Mastercard risked losing half its revenue from retail interchange fees as a result of the Reserve Bank's least-cost routing initiative, and struck deals with top retailers to defend its core business, a court was told Wednesday.

A trial judge has heard that Mastercard's top Australian executives discussed stripping Woolworths of strategic merchant status if the supermarket giant routed customer transactions through the cheaper EFTPOS network.

Mastercard's Australia boss was anxious to sign a deal with Woolworths on payments processing after learning that Coles had chosen to route all debit transactions through the cheaper EFTPOS network, a court has heard.

Mastercard considered threatening Coles with losing its discounted interchange fees to rival Woolworths if the supermarket chain re-routed customer debit and credit transactions away from the payments giant, a trial judge has heard in the ACCC's misuse of market power case.

Institutional asset manager IFM Investor was ready to sweep up Dexus' shares in Melbourne Airport operator APAC under a forced sale process triggered by a default notice for alleged confidentiality breaches, a court heard Tuesday.

The chair of airport operator APAC has admitted redacting advice from Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer to remove a suggested remedy for major shareholder Dexus' alleged breach of confidentiality, but denies she misled the board.

A top in-house lawyer at Dexus has told a court the real estate asset manager was using an altered form of a non-disclosure agreement with bidders of a portion of its APAC bloc of shares without the approval of the airport operator's co-owners.

The court battle between APAC and major shareholder Dexus over the sale of an investor's stake in the airport operator went to a hearing this week, but it's the solicitors representing the warring parties that found themselves on trial.