The growth of financial services technology or Fintech as it is now called has exploded in recent years yet many of its creators dont realise that their innovations are patentable ...

After almost 10 years of negotiations between the nations on 17 November 2014 Prime Minister Abbott and President Xi announced the conclusion of negotiations on the China Australia Free Trade Agreement ChAFTA Once implemented the ChAFTA is expected to significantly reduce import barriers for ...

The High Court has reaffirmed the powers of a responsible entity are ultimately derived from the scheme's constitution, but the exercise of those powers is constrained by the statutory and fiduciary duties imposed on the responsible entity. ...

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 ...

An increased focus on taxing indirect real property transfers has seen the 'land-rich' or 'landholder' duty rules expand significantly over the years, resulting in far more transactions being liable to duty. ...

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission has announced that it will take no action where a self-managed superannuation fund trustee is treated as a wholesale client notwithstanding that the trustee does not have to meet the 10 million net asset threshold even though the financial service ...

Exposure draft legislation to implement long-awaited changes to the tax regime for managed investment trusts is expected to be issued shortly ahead of the regimes recently announced start date of 1 July 2015 Partner Katrina Parkyn recaps some of its expected key features and likely impacts on the ...

The Financial System Inquiry inevitably the Murray Inquiry is the successor of the Campbell Inquiry 1979-1981 and the Wallis Inquiry 1996-1997 Both the Campbell and Wallis reports considered that investors were best protected through disclosure and market integrity rules Both reports assumed that ...

Further amendments to existing property legislation that aims to streamline the sale of property particularly in respect of the sale of off-the-plan lots have been introduced into the Queensland Parliament These amendments will be of substantial benefit to developers Partner Alister Fitzgerald ...

New legislation in Queensland that implements a range of reforms for leasehold land has been passed and will commence on a day to be fixed by proclamation The reforms will provide greater security of tenure for rural leaseholders and are likely to make such leases more attractive to investors ...