Australia's 'Company Law Watchdog' : ASIC and Corporate Regulation

The writing and publication of this book comes at a time of heightened public interest in regulation, especially regulation by Australia's "company law watchdog" - the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). Testimony to this is that around 6090 submissions by groups and individuals were made to the recent inquiry into ASIC's performance, which was referred by the Senate to the Economics References Committee in June 2013 and which reported on 26 June 2014. There is also the fact that in recent years, ASIC has brought a number of high profile cases, which have been widely reported in the popular press so as to lift its profile as Australia's "corporate cop". Such cases include those against the directors of HIH Insurance Limited (HIH), One.Tel and more recently, James Hardie, where allegations of breaches of directors' duties have also occurred in a range of contexts from approval of misleading financial reports in Centro and announcements to the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) in James Hardie and Forrest to engaging in conduct contrary to United Nations (UN) resolutions and causing reputational harm in Australian Wheat Board (AWB)