Going into the 2013 election the present Government promised a review of the regulatory framework for retirement income streams Today the Government finally released its report It has been a long time coming And while the main outcome - a new category of tax effective pensions and annuities - will ...

Superannuation fund trustees and their lawyers including this one have been grappling for years with what the covenant in section 522c of the Superannuation Industry Supervision Act 1993 means What must a trustee do to exercise its powers and discharge its duties in the best interests of ...

There is lots of noise about the duties of financial advisers and lawyers including us love to debate whether FoFA has left any room for fiduciary obligations ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 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 ...

Australian boards and senior executives are expected to maintain oversight of risk and compliance issues including bribery, sanctions, human rights and anti-money laundering. ...

Stapled structures have been used as an investment platform in the property and infrastructure sectors for decades and more recently have been deployed into renewable energy agriculture and other areas Through the issue of its Taxpayer Alert on stapled structures on 31 January 2017 the ATO indicated ...