The Victorian Government has introduced legislation to impose a 3 per cent stamp duty surcharge on foreign purchasers of residential land and a 05 per cent land tax surcharge on absentee owners of both residential and other land The proposed legislation is very broad and applies to both direct and ...

The World Bank has released its Benchmarking Public Procurement 2016 report which provides comparable data on regulatory environments that affect the ability of private companies to do business with governments in 77 economies Allens Partner Leighton OBrien and Linklaters Counsel Julia ...

A new planning regime for Queensland has come into effect today with the commencement of the Planning Act 2016. ...

Fund financing facilities have continued to flourish in Australia providing sponsors general partners and trustees with additional funding flexibility and liquidity Allens Partner Tom Highnam Managing Associate Rita Pang and Associate Victoria Johns provide an overview of the funds sector current ...

As regulatory and political pressure increases on the major banks in Australia alternative credit providers are entering the market with a variety of products to attract borrowers The unitranche loan is an example of one such product Partner Warwick Newell Senior Overseas Practitioner Alex Tonkin ...

New legislation in Queensland that implements a range of reforms for leasehold land has been passed and will commence on a day to be fixed by proclamation The reforms will provide greater security of tenure for rural leaseholders and are likely to make such leases more attractive to investors ...

Earlier today ASIC released an updated version of Regulatory Guide 246 concerning conflicted remuneration and other banned benefits such as volume-based shelf-space fees The changes are largely to address the life insurance remuneration reforms which take effect on 1 January 2018 But there are other ...

Earlier today Treasury released exposure draft regulations for Innovative Superannuation Income Streams They set out income stream standards that will be relevant for products such as deferred annuities and group self-annuitised products The Allens Superannuation team reports ...

Although the Commissioner says that the Royal Commission is part of the executive and not the judiciary and that he is therefore not able to make any findings of law he comes pretty close in his views in response to Round 2 And in some important respects those views do not correspond with ...

In his recent Interim Report into Misconduct in the Banking Superannuation and Financial Services Industry Commissioner Hayne makes a lot of the duties of an Australian financial services licensee and an Australian credit licensee to provide financial services or credit activities as the case may be ...