The Australian Law Reform Commission released for consultation today a set of proposals aimed at overhauling the federal corporate criminal responsibility regime. This comes in the wake of criticisms that the current system is ineffective in preventing, deterring and prosecuting serious corporate crime. Whilst the reforms offer a clearer, consistent and more rational framework for addressing corporate misconduct in Australia, some elements (such as the adoption of a general 'associate' model for criminal attribution) will no doubt raise concern given their capacity to significantly extend corporate liability. We examine some of the key proposals and their likely impact. Partner Christopher Kerrigan and Senior Overseas Practitioner Cindy McNair report. ...

ASIC has released its first report focusing on director and officer oversight of non-financial risk in seven large financial services companies (the First Report). While the report focuses on financial services companies, ASIC points out expressly that all companies, regardless of sector, should read and engage with the findings of this report. ...

The Australian Bankers Association last year commissioned Stephen Sedgwick to undertake a review of remuneration in retail banking ...

Senators Jacqui Lambie and Ricky Muir this morning joined a group of cross-bench Senators in announcing that they would vote with Labor and the Greens to disallow the Governments FoFA regulations made in June this year - the Corporations Amendment Streamlining Future of Financial Advice Regulation ...

In preparing its Final Report the FSI has clearly paid close attention to the report of the Senate Economics References Committees Report into ASICs performance and its recommendations designed to strengthen ASIC through a combination of better funding an enhanced regulatory toolkit and higher ...

Various amendments to ASICs employee incentive scheme class order relief have now come into effect Described by ASIC as minor and machinery in nature the clarifications and improvements were prompted in part by market feedback Partner Greg Bosmans looks at the changes ...

We have previously reported on ASICs submission to the Financial System Inquiry FSI and in particular its assertion that it needs a broader range of more onerous financial penalties in order to punish and deter corporate wrongdoing ASIC made similar submissions to the recent inquiry by the Senate ...

From 1 January 2015 a new common risk management prudential standard will apply to banks general insurers and life companies and in many cases to other companies in the corporate groups in which those institutions sit Michael Mathieson looks at the three lines of defence model that APRA proposes to ...

In recent times APRA has been active in prescribing duties for directors of the institutions it regulates In light of what has happened it is worth asking should the question of directors duties be excluded from APRAs prudential standard-making powers ...

After talks of introducing a special tax regime for employee options in start-ups, the Federal Government has reverted back to the global norm of employee options granted by all companies generally being taxed on exercise ...