Litigation funding is used to increase access to justice for those otherwise unable to prosecute a claim to uncover and remedy incompetence, reckless or egregious behaviour. Litigation can also be misused, perhaps as a strategic tool, and in the formulation of legal tactics in class action litigation.

Dr David Millhouse, Senior Honorary Adjunct Research Fellow, Faculty of Law at Bond University, discusses shareholder class action financing by looking into the Australian Law Reform Commission 2018, the PJC ‘Paterson’ Inquiry 2020, and more. He will delve further into this at the Shareholder Class Actions: Reforms & Risks on Thursday 10 June.

Raising capital is a long hard process requiring considerable time, patience and shoe leather. Many start-ups underestimate the time and financial resources required to achieve a result. Many also do not comprehend that capital raising activities are rarely one-off activities.

It is little wonder that only a small proportion of investment proposals ever successfully attract venture capital. The relationship between entrepreneurs and investors and bankers can sometimes be likened to the relationship between contestants in a boxing match, entering the ring from opposite corners, both adamant they are up against opponents, not potential allies, from the very first bell.

‘Fiduciary’ and ‘best interest’ are commonly used terms interpreted differently in the law and often misunderstood by the legislature, media, in the investment chain and in corporate governance. Their heritage lies in equity, meaning a duty to give undivided loyalty to the vulnerable whom they serve. That is where divergence begins.

Understanding Equity Capital Raising and how it can work for you. This stage often involves merger and acquisition activity, larger-scale financing as the business drives to a market leadership position. The change in the management skill sets required often results in the original Founders moving aside and treating the business as an investment rather than as a place to go to work.

Dr David Millhouse, the Senior Research Fellow at the Faculty of Law at Bond University, discusses how to utilise analytics, AI and robotic process automation to meet regulatory duties. He will be delving further into this topic at the upcoming In-House Counsel: CPD Compulsory Units taking place on Tuesday 1 December 2020.

Scholarly empirical analyses provide guidance to policy makers in Australia’s ascent from the viral abyss to entrepreneurial sunlit uplands on which post-COVID prosperity might be built. These analyses provide regulatory options which can substantially diminish or lengthen the damage inflicted by the present crisis. They are policy choices only exercisable by the federal government.

Australia is replete with commissions and inquiries into egregious behaviour in its financial sector. This author has quantified the effects of those behaviours on individuals and the wider economy.1 These investigations include Heydon2 (elimination of unhealthy culture), Hayne3 (confluence of law and morality) and the Productivity Commission4 (trust).

Future boards of the Financial Adviser Standards and Ethics Authority (FASEA) will have no choice but to come to grips with the legal uncertainty inherent in the FASEA code of ethics, according to academic, Dr David Millhouse.

ABSTRACT Best interest is a commonly used and misunderstood phrase interpreted differently in the law, media, legislature and throughout the investment chain, sometimes glibly. For investors, best interest has been confused with oft-misguided concepts of undivided loyalty to their economic interests. These differing interpretations influence every financial advice relationship, including process.

For the record, to be absolutely clear, as advised to APRA in writing by counsel, this author has never been a director of any company when it was called “Trio”. Assertions to contrary are false, a factual mistake by APRA more interested in administrative convenience than fact, which remains uncorrected and potentially defamatory. Related Story - https://treasury.gov.au/publication/p2019-394057

Australian financial regulation and supervision at a cross-roads. Whilst the Hayne Royal Commission identified egregious behaviour in banks and large financial institutions, far greater economic damage has occurred in less well known sectors of the Australian financial system.

Australia has arguably benefited from its market based regulatory system and progressed toward its first objective of an entrepreneurial wealth creating society competing with its global peers; the second objective, being investment stability and risk mitigation, has for many people been an abject disaster. https://www.afr.com/chanticleer/kenneth-hayne-must-traverse-a-legal-quagmire-20190115-h1a3l

The Australian Government is in receipt of four landmark reports: the Heydon Royal Commission, Productivity Commission (superannuation and financial sector competition), and the Hayne Royal Commission. Each of them points to deep systemic and cyclical problems in the provision of financial products and financial services.

Ticky Fullerton speaks with the chair of Household Capital Nick Sherry, Adam Creighton chats with Gabriel Sterne from Oxford Economics and CEO of the AIIA Ron Gauci. Plus, editor of YourMoney.com.au Aleks Vickovich speaks with the founder of Legal Analytics David Millhouse

The complexity of the legal reform task facing banking royal commissioner Kenneth Hayne is laid bare in the first rigorous and detailed analysis of all the corporate collapses and fraudulent financial activity that hit consumers and ended up in court between 1981 and 2018.