From 1 October 2016 a stamp duty surcharge of an additional 3 per cent will apply when a foreign person acquires residential land in Queensland Affected taxpayers should therefore urgently consider whether contracts relating to potentially affected transactions can be exchanged in the next few days ...

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 countries Partner Leighton OBrien who contributed to the reports analysis of ...

A recent decision of the English High Court may pave the way for the use of predictive coding in large scale discovery and regulatory investigations in Australia Partners Nick Rudge and Duncan Travis Managing Associate Kate Austin and Associate Emily Giblin look at the benefits and risks of the new ...

There were three announcements this week that will serve to bolster the emerging Australian FinTech sector The Government released a statement in support of FinTech as part of its National Innovation and Science Agenda while ASIC issued two sets of guidance an information sheet for providers of ...

The High Court of Australia has decided that a third party claimant can join an insolvent or potentially insolvent defendants insurer to proceedings to seek a declaration that the insurer is liable to indemnify the defendant Partner Andrew Maher and Lawyer Shelley Drenth discuss the decision and its ...

The Productivity Commission has released an issues paper inviting submissions on the criteria that should be used to assess the efficiency and competitiveness of Australias superannuation system This will be of interest not only to superannuation trustees but also to service providers including fund ...

The Dodd Frank Act is a bit like the US financial system it is trying to regulate - vast complex and hard to wade through It creates a bunch of new regulators on top of what was already a pretty solid cast and gives them wide-ranging powers They can not only set capital and liquidity requirements ...

The Government has finally begun the process of implementing its policy on crowd-sourced equity funding CSEF by introducing a Bill and releasing draft exposure regulations late last year which envisage the establishment of a CSEF regime in Australia The Bill has been referred to the Senate Economics ...

The Federal Government has proposed new legislation that introduces two new criminal offences for false accounting into the Commonwealth Criminal Code The proposed false accounting offences are designed to help Australia comply with the OECDs Convention on Combating Bribery of Foreign Public ...

The release of the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement has renewed the debate about the ability of foreign investors to sue governments under investor-State dispute settlement mechanisms which are commonly part of international trade agreements or investment treaties between States ...