Please note that the links to the content in this Part will direct you to Westlaw AU. If you are using Checkpoint, the links can be found in the Checkpoint PDF at the bottom of this post.
To purchase an article, please email: [email protected] or contact us on 1300 304 195 (Australian customers) or +61 2 8587 7980 (international customers) during business hours (Mon-Fri, 8am-6pm AST).
The latest issue of the Australian Business Law Review (Volume 53 Part 2) contains the following material:
EDITORIAL – General Editor: Michael Terceiro
Articles
The Australian financial regulatory framework, while founded on principles-based regulation, faces persistent cyclical failures and continued enforcement challenges, particularly affecting ASIC’s ability to regulate effectively. Fragmented legislative provisions obscure governing principles, leading to an over-reliance on regulatory guidance and imposing economic and operational burdens on stakeholders. This legislative inefficiency contributes to broader regulatory dysfunction, undermining confidence in the financial system and hindering policy objectives. Meanwhile, the rise of corporate sustainability and greenwashing necessitates stronger climate risk disclosures in financial products. Climate-related risks constitute material financial considerations warranting regulatory scrutiny and disclosure obligations equivalent to traditional financial risks in product documentation. Through a comprehensive analysis of reform proposals and emerging regulatory imperatives, this article argues that restructuring Australia’s financial services law and improving regulatory efficiency would reduce uncertainty, enhance market integrity, and streamline compliance for industry participants – delivering benefits that decisively outweigh the challenges of implementation.
Intellectual Property in Times of Crisis: Evidence from Australia’s S&P/ASX 100 Listed Firms – Tony Ciro and Bülend Terzioglu
There have been two significant global crises in the new Millennium. The first was aptly described as a financial crisis and coined with the “GFC” acronym. The Global Financial Crisis was one of the most significant financial crises since the 1930s Great Depression, eclipsing the more contemporary 1987 Stock Market Crash and the 90s Asian Financial Crisis. The second global crisis swept the globe at the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020. This time, a health crisis in the form of a contagious coronavirus, COVID-19 engulfed the world. Like the GFC, the health crisis engineered a global recession, with many parts of the world experiencing a substantial slowdown in economic growth coupled with rising unemployment in 2020 and 2021. To date, limited research has investigated the effect both crises have had on the value and holdings of intellectual property (IP) assets. This article presents an empirical snapshot of IP holdings of the top 100 listed entities on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) during the onset of the GFC and the more recent onset of the COVID-19 global pandemic. The article further examines the impact of monetary and fiscal policy responses to both the GFC and COVID-19 crisis to determine whether there was any discernible effect on IP values and holdings with large ASX-listed entities.
The Rise of Technology Contracts-agreements: What It Means for Multi-party Transnational Commercial Arbitration? – Robert Walters
Across the technology sector, the emergence of new contracts and agreements is now governing commercial relationships. Significantly, the technology driven economy uses contracts and agreements to govern digital payments, digital finance, cybersecurity, personal data storage, tokens, amongst others. Notably, these contracts and agreements come with a level of legal obligation. Thus, under the law of Australia and India, it is likely that these agreements will fall under contract law. The article compares the relevant laws and arbitration rules across the economies of Australia and India in relation to multi-party, joinder, third-party arbitrations and class arbitrations. It further highlights how cross-chain smart contracts and the technology of blockchain or a distributed ledger is not advanced enough at this stage to manage these contracts. This article is timely as Australia and India expand their trade and investment relations.
For the PDF version of the table of contents, click here: New Westlaw Australia – ABLR Vol 53 No 2 Contents or here: Checkpoint – ABLR Vol 53 No 2 Contents.
Click here to access this Part on New Westlaw AU
Click here to access this Part on Checkpoint
For general queries, please contact: [email protected].
