Bridgecorp, the failed finance company whose directors were imprisoned for making false statements in offer documents seeking investor funds, was on the path to insolvency when it issued the prospectus in 2006, Crown lawyer Brian Dickey told the Court of Appeal today. The company’s former chief financial officer Rob Roest is appealing his High Court conviction and six-and-a-half year sentence …

The new head of the New Zealand Serious Fraud Office is an Australian, Julie Read, currently Special Counsel (Litigation) at the Australian Securities and Exchange Commission. After a decade at ASIC, the Australian equivalent of the Financial Markets Authority, Read will move from her current base in Tasmania, where she has also been the ASIC state commissioner since 2002, to …

The National-led government has lost its parliamentary majority to pass reforms to the Resource Management Act, with the United Future and Maori parties announcing this morning they will not vote for changes that undermine environmental protections. While both parties support reforms to speed up the resource consenting processes, both believe that proposals to rewrite two fundamental sections dealing with environmental …