Originally posted by timeti
Great article in the Weekend Australian. The Condor Racket and how Joshur Farquhar is taking the directors to court to retrieve shareholder funds. The photo of Andrew Mortimer with eye patch looks familiar.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/ne...s/news-story/5a6d20a824c8c207e73bade1301ebb16
I found these paragraphs of particular interest:
Groups such as Condor have found the sweet spot, with fraudsters exploiting the smaller end of town, where regulator attention is essentially non-existent, and for those who get burned, the costs of legal action outweigh the benefits.
Big company collapses bring a lot of attention, industry experts say. The small fly under the radar.But more importantly, when it comes to issues that are relatively complicated and involve smaller companies, ASIC tends to take no action — it argues investors who should get together for “class actions” in the hope of recovering their losses.
But, like ASIC, class-action litigators find taking on smaller companies — with losses of, say, $30m — is not worth the trouble. They have to charge substantial fees to cover the heavy cost of lawyers, and take the risk that they lose and recover nothing. And by the time they take what they consider to be a fair share of any proceeds in the case of smaller companies, that share comes in at as much as half or more of any returns.“The shareholders get upset and attack them, which is a PR nightmare, so they just steer clear,” Farquhar says.
The financial dynamics of the market have created a perfect storm for financial crime.
