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 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 4 years in the Financial Regulation group 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;
- Major Australian Banks – ASIC regulatory investigations on a range of subject matters, including allegations of insider trading and failure to provide fee disclosure statements;
- CBA – class action relating to life insurance policies recommended by financial advisers;
- Investment Banks – ASIC review of corporate governance arrangements; investigation into whistleblowing disclosures; obligations under the ASIC breach reporting regime;
- Macquarie Bank – BEAR and FAR implementation project;
- Westpac – financial crime uplift projects;
- Professional services firm – investigation into alleged large scale employee misconduct concerning training and testing; and
- 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.