Westpac to recover bulk of funds in Sargon collapse
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Westpac will get the lion’s share of leftover money from the sale of a handful of assets which operated under the Sargon umbrella following the collapse of the formerly Phil Kingston-run financial technology business.
More than a year after the collapse of Sargon following a loan repayment demand from China state-owned finance company Taiping Trustees, and nearly a year since proceedings got under way in the Federal Court of Australia, Justice Michael O’Bryan ruled Westpac is entitled to 65.5 per cent of retained proceeds from certain sales of assets and shares during Sargon’s liquidation.
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Inside the Dover judgement
Inside the Dover judgement
Terry McMaster and Dover Financial have been hit with hefty fines despite the Federal Court failing to find an instance in which their actions harmed consumers.
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“In my view, the Client Protection Policy had real potential to mislead consumers into believing that they had no legal recourse against Dover in respect of financial advice given to them when that was not the case,” Justice O’Bryan said in his judgement.
“Such an erroneous belief could have caused consumers very great loss. While the evidence shows that, in the period before the conduct was stopped by the intervention of ASIC, it was unlikely that consumers had suffered loss, the seriousness of the contravention must also be assessed by the loss that the conduct had the potential to occasion.”
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The federal court has dished out a $1.2 million penalty to Dover Financial Advisers as part of the fallout from its 2019 judgement that the stricken licensee engaged in “false, misleading or deceptive conduct” when it provided almost 20,000 ‘client protection’ policies.
As part of the ruling the firm’s former sole director, Terence McMaster, has also been ordered to pay $240,000 for being “knowingly concerned” in Dover’s conduct.
Dover had its AFSL cancelled by ASIC in September 2018 after it found that the protection policy provided to clients actually stripped them of protections by creating a “significant imbalance in the rights and obligations of the adviser and their client”, as well as prioritising the interests of the firm and its representatives over those of the clients.