Competition & Consumer Protection

A judge has slapped payday lenders BSF, Cigno and their directors with a combined $7 million in penalties for engaging in unlicensed credit activity, finding a lower penalty was appropriate given they had relied on legal advice from Piper Alderman.

Former ACCC chair Allan Fels says the competition regulator appears to have a strong misuse of market power case against Mastercard, but noted the credit card giant may raise arguments about two-sided markets in defending the claims.

The ACCC will look deeper at IAG's proposed acquisition of the RACWA's insurance operations for the second time, saying there were concerns the transaction could substantially lessen competition.

Fletcher Building has won approval to sell its construction division to France-based VINCI Construction for NZ$315.6 million.

Mastercard executives who claim they had no anti-competitive purpose when pursuing agreements with retailers to favour its network are expected to face cross-examination about responses given to the Reserve Bank about its least cost routing initiative.

The firm behind a class action over remote housing in the Northern Territory has appealed a decision rejecting its bid to undo orders on the scope of the initial trial, after the judge disregarded submissions by a class action solicitor that "affronted" her.

Latitude Finance has been hit with a $3.96 million penalty for sending more than 2.3 million marketing messages that ran afoul of spam laws, the latest legal headache for the country's largest non-bank lender.

Mastercard has hit back at the ACCC’s claims that it sought to prevent competition with EFTPOS through strategic agreements with large retailers, saying the deals were struck for “benign and pro-competitive” reasons. 

Mastercard made ‘strategic’ agreements with large retailers like Coles and David Jones to keep them from routing through EFTPOS, offering discounted exchange rates that left smaller businesses footing the bill, the ACCC told the court on the first day of trial.

A judge hearing a class action against J&J over allegedly ineffective cold medications has questioned the merits of soft class closure in large consumer cases where participation is likely be low, just days after another judge raised similar concerns in a case against Toyota.