About Alexandra McCaughan
Alexandra specialises in commercial litigation and contentious regulatory investigations and enforcement proceedings.
Alexandra has extensive experience in providing expert legal and strategic advice to small and large corporate and financial services clients on compliance risk management issues, including in respect of governance controls and senior management accountability under the Banking Executive Accountability Regime and the much anticipated Financial Accountability Regime, in addition to conduct and notification and reporting matters that arise at various stages of the regulatory lifecycle, including under ASIC's breach reporting regime.
Prior to joining Allens, Alexandra spent four years at Linklaters in London. Alexandra has experience working on multi-jurisdictional regulatory investigations and compliance projects.
Alexandra's recent experience includes advising:
- Epic Games – in two Federal Court proceedings against Apple and Google alleging misuse of market power and other anti-competitive conduct in respect of mobile app distribution and in-app payment systems. This is the first big tech antitrust litigation in Australia and involved complex expert evidence from a range of disciplines including technology, security, payments, antitrust economics, econometrics, behavioural economics and forensic accounting. It involved a 16-week trial and included two related class actions.
- Retail and investment banks, and responsible entities – ASIC regulatory investigations on a range of subject matters. This includes allegations of market manipulation, insider trading, failure to comply with the market integrity rules, failure to breach report and other instances of non-compliance with financial services laws.
- Retail banks, investment banks, registrable superannuation entities, and insurers – matters arising and related to senior accountability (including the Banking Executive Accountability Regime the Financial Accountability Regime implementation projects), regulatory thematic reviews (including in relation to corporate governance), remediation programs, whistleblower disclosures, ASIC's breach reporting regime, and CPS511.
- CBA – class action relating to life insurance policies recommended by financial advisers.
- Westpac – financial crime uplift projects.
- Professional services firm – investigation into alleged large-scale employee misconduct concerning training and testing.
- Major UK and European retail banks and asset managers – internal and foreign regulatory investigations on a range of matters, including alleged failures in relation to executive accountability, transaction governance and oversight, whistleblowing policies and procedures, and AML systems and controls.