THE COMMONWEALTH BANK POTENTIALLY FACES AUSTRALIA'S LARGEST SHAREHOLDER CLASS ACTION
WHAT IS IT OVER?
* Connected to CBA's alleged 53,700 breaches of anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing laws
* Potential shareholder class action by Maurice Blackburn Lawyers, backed by litigation funder IMF Bentham
* CBA blames late transaction reporting on coding error following software update to its intelligent deposit machines in late 2012, which was fixed within a month of discovery in 2015
* Maurice Blackburn alleges CBA failed to make proper disclosures to sharemarket for nearly two years
* Says CBA said nothing until August 4 this year, day after news of AUSTRAC legal action
* Says CBA shares suffered a significant fall after the AUSTRAC news
* Shares fell from intraday high of $84.69 on August 3 to opening price of $80.11 on August 7
* Maurice Blackburn says 5.4 pct drop very significant price movement for CBA
HOW BIG IS THE CLASS ACTION?
* Maurice Blackburn says it will be Australia's largest shareholder class action
* Previous biggest shareholder class action was $200m settlement in 2012 of two class actions by 6000 shareholders in property group Centro
* CBA has 800,000 shareholders but class action only open to specific group
* Must have bought ordinary CBA shares between August 17, 2015, and August 3, 2017, and still held some or all of those shares after 1pm on August 3 this year
* Maurice Blackburn expects "thousands upon thousands" of mum and dad shareholders and institutional investors to join class action
Share
