Click to read Digital healthcare, a globally booming market, has been catalyzed by the events of COVID-19. In Asia Pacific, in particular, a rapidly expanding population, an empowered and tech-savvy middle class and physician shortage has created the perfect conditions for digital health innovation. A new era of digital healthcare…

Baker McKenzie’s Duties and Liabilities of Directors of Australian Companies is a comprehensive and timely guide for directors of Australian companies. Newly launched in September 2020, it reflects key issues for directors to consider in the current corporate governance landscape, while outlining their core legal obligations. Matters covered in this guide include…

The recent changes to continuous disclosure  obligations under the Corporations Act  have been welcomed by listed companies and their boards but don’t go as far as their stated purpose in the press release accompanying the legislative instrument implementing the changes, so companies will still need to be very careful in providing guidance or making other disclosures to the market.

The Australian Government has announced temporary changes to its foreign investment review framework so as to protect the national interest. Key Highlights Monetary threshold for foreign investment applications will now be $0. Statutory deadline for application decisions extended from 30 days to up to 6 months (but with priority given…

Temporary Changes to the Australian Foreign Investment Framework Following the announcement by the Australian Government of temporary changes to its foreign investment review framework, the Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) has released a Q&A, which may be found here. Recapping the announced changes All proposed foreign investments into Australia subject…

ASX has issued some helpful and pragmatic guidance in relation to continuous disclosure obligations in the COVID-19 environment. Key aspects of the guidance are: ASX recognises the challenges for listed companies in satisfying their disclosure obligations in this rapidly evolving and highly uncertain situation. The key issue remains that disclosure…

As COVID-19 continues to spread and market uncertainty surrounding it persists and intensifies, a number of ASX-listed companies have taken the unusual step of withdrawing, deferring payment of, or reducing, their previously announced dividends in order to preserve cash for the uncertain times ahead. Last week, for example, saw companies…

On 12 August 2019, the Australian Securities & Investments Commission (ASIC) released updates to two important Regulatory Guides (RGs) to formally include climate change as a risk that issuers should consider disclosing in a prospectus for retail clients (RG228) or in a company’s operating and financial review (RG247). This is…