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ARTICLE · 08 JUNE 2018

Marque explainer: what is going on with the banks and criminal cartel charges?

Marque Lawyers
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The DPP is prosecuting this alleged cartel conduct as a criminal offence, which suggests that the ACCC is confident.

AustraliaAntitrust/Competition Law
Hannah Marshall
Hannah Marshall
Michael Bradley
Michael Bradley
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Here's the skinny -

Back in 2015, ANZ did a $2.5B capital raising to increase its cash reserves. ANZ arranged for Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and JP Morgan to underwrite the share issue. That means they agreed to buy any shares issued in the capital raising that other investors didn't buy.

It turns out around a third of the shares didn't sell, so Citi, Deutsche and JP Morgan had to buy them. The criminal cartel case alleges that they then got together and agreed to limit or restrict their disposal of the shares.

In a scenario like that, the company issuing the shares would have an interest in such a sizeable chunk of shares not being offered into the market too quickly, as this oversupply could negatively impact the prevailing share price on the ASX.

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