IOOF Court Battle with Australian Regulator

The court ruled IOOF has not disregarded the pension duty laws. As a result, Australia’s banking watchdog lost the case against IOOF. This made a record of the second setback in many months for financial regulators looking to clamp down on misconduct in the country.

According to Jayne Jagot, a Federal Court judge, APRA was not able to demonstrate that top IOOF Holdings officials breached pension laws. APRA previously accused IOOF in a misused pension fund money.

In addition to that, Jagot also declined on Friday the disqualification request of APRA for IOOF directors. And she asked the regulator to may a legal payment costs for the firm.

Aside from that, APRA, in December, decided to make an unprecedented move. They sought to disqualify five IOOF executives by a court order. And their reason was they were allegedly failing to act to their customer’s interest.

Moreover, it accused IOOF of using money belonging to pension fund customers to compensate them for losses caused by the firm. Also, it has been working with the firm to clear up concerns about unaddressed conflicts of interest since 2015.

Then, Managing Director Christopher Kelaher and Chairman George Venardos stepped aside to combat the APRA’s move.

Tencent

Meanwhile, tech giant Tencent Holdings would leverage its strengths in video games and social media. The reason for this is to grab market share in China’s burgeoning cloud computing sector from incumbent Alibaba, head of its cloud unit.

Tencent is popular for its WeChat messaging app and a suite of popular games. However, it plans to expand more of its business services as consumer internet growth slows. And firms change number-crunching from their own computers to the cloud.

Senior Executive Vice President Dowson Tong stated, “We can start from where we have advantages.” He also explained that most of their aims this time might take a relatively long time.