Author Archives: ETE

Former managing director of Global Merces Funds Management Ltd (in liquidation) Ms Holly Marie Grofski has been sentenced to offences involving the falsification of documents and the provision of false information to an auditor. Following her guilty pleas, Ms Grofski was convicted and sentenced in the Brisbane District Court. Ms Grofski was sentenced on each […]

The Federal Court has found four companies that are or were part of the AMP Group breached the law when charging life insurance premiums and advice fees from the superannuation accounts of more than 2,000 deceased customers. The Federal Court ordered two of these AMP companies to pay a combined penalty of $24 million for […]

Former Australian Mines managing director, Benjamin Bell, has been fined $70,000 and disqualified from managing corporations for two years for breaching his duties as a director. The Federal Court decision comes after Mr Bell admitted he failed to act with the degree of care and diligence required of a director when he gave presentations at […]

Athan Papoulias of Brighton Le Sands, NSW, a former contractor to and promoter of Courtenay House investments, has been sentenced to two years’ imprisonment, to be served by way of an intensive corrections order for his role in the unlicensed financial services business. As part of his sentence, Mr Papoulias was ordered to complete 120 […]

ASIC has disqualified Anthony Makris of Frankston Victoria, from managing corporations for three years due to his involvement in the failure of two companies. Between January 2018 and March 2020 Mr Makris was the director of two companies that entered liquidation: M2O (Made Two Order) Pty Ltd (ACN 127 422 422) (M2O); and M2O Interiors […]

ASIC has today released updated guidance for industry on making notifications to ASIC under the reportable situations regime (formerly breach reporting). The updates to Regulatory Guide 78 Breach reporting by AFS licensees and credit licensees (RG 78) clarify aspects of the existing guidance and provide new guidance in response to operational issues that have arisen […]

The Federal Court has ordered that Ascent Investment and Coaching Pty Ltd (Ascent) be wound up on just and equitable grounds, together with the managed investment scheme operated by Ascent. The orders follow freezing orders obtained by ASIC against Ascent and its director, Michael Dunjey, in December 2021 (21-352MR) and ASIC’s application to wind up […]

ASIC is calling for all financial institutions to improve their approaches to handling scams after new ASIC analysis revealed that scam losses for major bank customers exceeded $550m last financial year and impacted more than 31,700 customers. The figures come from ASIC’s new Report 761 Scam prevention, detection and response by the four major banks, […]

Following our announcement of redress as part of our enforcement case against Link Fund Solutions (LFS), we explain what this means if you invested in the Woodford Equity Income Fund (WEIF). LFS, with the support of its ultimate parent, Link Administration Holdings (Link Group), has proposed a scheme which, if approved, will see them pay […]

Improved overdraft rules brought in by the FCA have reduced high fees for unarranged borrowing, removed complex charging structures, and introduced help for those who were repeatedly using their overdraft. The £1 billion in savings for customers is from two separate measures the FCA introduced. This includes: More than £500 million was saved due to […]