Australian criminal-cartel prosecution linked to family-run Vina Money Transfer being hit with a $716,000 fine

The growing use of smart speakers and TV sets has prompted a conversation about privacy

Australian commercial TV and radio broadcasters are demanding new codes of conduct

Outside the United States, Clearview AI’s business model is under threat. Australia and Canada have forced the company to shutter its local operations

Big Tech threw everything it had in recent legal attempts to have four separate court disputes in Australia moved to a court in California — and failed.

The UK’s competition enforcer’s approach to Big Tech has come to a fork in the road

Criminal-cartel prosecutions against Vina Money Transfer moved forward with regulator close to securing first antitrust jail sentence

Regulatory concerns over Microsoft’s Activision Blizzard acquisition; and Australia’s BlueScope cartel lawsuit

Australia’s competition regulator is about to see its most significant leadership shakeup in more than a decade.

Australian judge now weighing up the evidence from BlueScope Steel price-fixing lawsuit

A United States review of the combination between Lockheed Martin and Aerojet Rocketdyne is set to continue.

NAB’s plans to acquire Citigroup’s Australian consumer business could create the country’s second-largest credit card provider.

Digital advertising is back on the agenda in Europe, with the announcement of a fresh EU antitrust probe.

NAB is under investigation in Australia after regulators identified “serious concerns” with the bank’s compliance with AML laws.

“Fish for finance” may sound like a trendy eatery in London’s West End, but it is simply the latest round of post-Brexit animosity.

That a jury would require no more than half a day to deliberate at the end of an 11-week trial was a bad omen for Australia’s federal prosecutors.

The joint statement by the antitrust regulators of Australia, Germany and the UK this week.

Australia’s world-first antitrust review Facebook and Google’s has a new generation of regulation and enforcement.

Forcing Facebook and Google to break up their datasets to make it easier for rival adtech to enter and compete

This MLex special report focuses on the worldwide shockwaves that Australia is causing as it charts an experimental course in policing Big Tech.

Australia has failed to bring lawyers, accountants, real estate agents and trust and company service providers under the country’s anti-money laundering law.

The decision to kick Australian media off the platform was a show of strength from Facebook.

Facebook decided that Australia’s new mandatory code of conduct forcing platforms to pay for news content meant including media content was not viable.

Facebook and Google would be forced to break up their datasets.

YouTube and Instagram grabbed Australian headlines this week.

End-to-end encryption in messaging services has been a boon for privacy.

The FinCEN Files show that banks and other financial institutions should be playing a greater role in disrupting and preventing financial crimes early on.

MLex’s local team of reporters examines how Australia's competition watchdog has used the offense to tackle anti-competitive agreements.

This report is an in-depth look at Australia’s struggle to secure its first criminal cartel convictions — and make jail time a deterrent at last.

Oracle told Australian competition officials to focus on Google’s expanded use of personal information through the 2008 acquisition of DoubleClick.

Parts of Australian legislation granting law-enforcement agencies the right to demand access to de-encrypted communications has remain unused since its introduction in 2018.

When Australian senior antitrust official fronted an online media scrum in Sydney, his message to the world’s digital platforms was simple: it’s time to grow up.

Australian laws to stop the streaming and spreading of “abhorrent violent material” via online platforms caught the attention of global leaders.

Facebook’s track record of strategic acquisitions lie at the heart of the Australian regulator’s decision to probe the platform’s decision to acquire Giphy.

Three million Australians have downloaded the government’s CovidSafe contact tracing app in three days, as the government followed an Asia-Pacific wave.

It’s less than 10 days since Australia’s competition regulator said it was anticipating an increase in applications from companies seeking exemptions from competition laws to ensure they not only deliver essential services to citizens during the outbreak of the Covid-19 virus, but survive the economic uncertainty caused by the global pandemic

The global momentum around consumer data rights is arriving in New Zealand, the country’s top privacy official has said, with pressure from the financial industry for the country to introduce open banking systems only expected to grow throughout 2020.

Lawyers for former Australia & New Zealand Banking Group executive Rick Moscati will find out on Friday which documents they'll be able to use to prepare their defense in a landmark criminal-cartel case against ANZ, Citigroup Global Markets and Deutsche Bank Australia, as well as six former employees at the banks. The decision on document access was confirmed by a local court in Sydney this week.

Lawyers for Australia & New Zealand Banking Group, Citigroup Global Markets and Deutsche Bank Australia had a clear goal when they entered a local Sydney court on Dec. 5 to cross-examine witnesses in the criminal-cartel case against the lenders.

When New Zealand scrapped the joint-venture exemptions under the country’s competition law in 2017, few mourned their passing. “They were a dog,” one lawyer told MLex recently. “They were form over substance and very difficult to apply.”

Australia’s competition regulator could use criminal obstruction charges leveled at former BlueScope Steel manager Jason Ellis as an example for future cartel probes, an ex-US Department of Justice official has said.

US technology company Oracle presented Australian competition and privacy officials with a phone using the Android operating system to demonstrate that the device communicated with Google, even though it contained no SIM card and had no apps running, according to documents obtained by MLex.

When word got out last week that Norwegian shipping line Wallenius Wilhelmsen Ocean had been added to a growing list of companies on the receiving end of criminal-cartel prosecutions in Australia, there was some surprise among the country’s competition-law practitioners.

The Australian government has published the ACCC report on the influence of Facebook and Google on the country’s media and advertising industries.

The regulatory is ready to hand in the report on their findings on the impact of digital platforms on the country’s media and advertising issue.

Australian merger law is under renewed scrutiny as the country’s competition regulator fights to make its voice heard by Federal Court judges.

TPG Telecom’s decision to scrap its planned rollout of a 5G mobile phone network as a result of a ban on Chinese telecommunications company Huawei will play a central role in an Australian court action, with lawyers for the country’s competition regulator today questioning the company’s motives.

A court finding that the acquisition of the Acacia Ridge Terminal in north-eastern Australia by freight operator Pacific National would have harmed competition has vindicated an ultimately unsuccessful court action launched by the country’s competition regulator, its chief says.

Vodafone Hutchison Australia’s merger with local telecommunications operator TPG Telecom has been blocked, with the country's competition regulator revealing it hasn't accepted TPG's 11th-hour decision to pull the plug on its planned network rollout.

A technical glitch that saw a regulatory decision on a proposed multibillion-dollar telecommunications merger published before the market had closed for the day was “deeply embarrassing,” Australia’s top competition official says.

There’s a growing consensus among Australian legal practitioners on why the country’s competition regulator is calling for law changes to help it assess mergers of technology companies based not on what the parties look like today, but what they’re likely to become tomorrow.

Until relatively recently, there was little to indicate that Australia was on the cusp on a regulatory push that might keep Silicon Valley’s most powerful companies awake at night.

A criminal-cartel prosecution of Country Care attracts attention for how prosecutors’ tactics may inform other criminal-cartel prosecutions.

Companies carrying out business in New Zealand must notify the country’s privacy watchdog of data breaches if a breach has caused “serious harm or is likely to do so,” a new parliamentary report says.

Australia’s foray into a brave, new world of criminal-cartel enforcement began here — in a snug Melbourne court with faulty air conditioning. This is where a steady flow of often resentful regional and suburban small-business owners wearing slacks and open-necked shirts reached the witness stand.

If Australian competition law is a circus, then Rod Sims is the man in the big tent sporting a top hat and tails, spinning priceless porcelain plates.

The penalty imposed on Australian biomedical company Cryosite in the country’s first-ever case involving gun-jumping cartel offenses could have been 30 times higher, according to a court document that also points to the judge’s ongoing concerns that the small fine would affect its value as a deterrent.

Introducing a “right to erasure” as part of privacy-law changes in New Zealand would fundamentally change the public’s access to accurate information, an industry group including Amazon.com, Facebook and Google has told the country's parliament.

When Australia’s independent investigation of the country’s banking industry was in mid-flight in 2018, competition lawyers in the country were confident that it was on the cusp of turning its attention to market shortcomings.

Speak to most lawyers in Australia, and they’ll tell you that dealing with the country’s competition regulator is a relatively stress-free endeavor. Officials at the other end of the phone tend to be upfront, polite and predictable.

Critics of New Zealand’s planned criminal-cartel offenses have little to look forward to in 2019. Wellington appears unlikely to offer any significant compromises, meaning that the country is likely to enter the Easter holidays in April with tough, new laws on the statute book.

It’s no surprise that retail fuel prices are among the top issues on the New Zealand competition regulator's investigative agenda following the new powers it gained last year. The price of gasoline and unexplained regional differences have generated much public debate and politicians have been clamoring for action.

On paper, the proposed changes to Australia’s mergers and acquisitions laws put forward in the competition regulator’s draft report on digital platforms including Facebook and Google shouldn’t be enough to set Silicon Valley’s collective imagination on fire.

Allegations that Google violated Australian competition laws when it imposed restrictions on local digital startup Unlockd are being investigated by the country’s antitrust watchdog, MLex has learned.