Labor Senator Sam Dastyari confirmed to ifa that the Economics Committee will meet again in Sydney on 3 August “to further scrutinise IOOF executives on their responses to serious allegations of misconduct”.
The hearing follows allegations of front-running and insider trading at IOOF sparked by Fairfax Media news reports.
Senator Dastyari could not confirm who will attend the next hearing, saying “the names of the witnesses will not be made public until they have been contacted and formally invited”.
However, sources familiar with the inquiry said they are expected to include IOOF chairmen Roger Sexton, company secretary Danielle Corcoran, head of investigations Rob Urwin and head of research Peter Hilton – the man at the centre of the allegations.
Earlier this month, the committee grilled IOOF managing director Chris Kelaher, who reiterated there was no systemic failure at the $2.6 billion financial services giant that required it to inform ASIC.
Mr Kelaher said a PwC inquiry last year found no evidence of front-running detected. He later agreed to turn over that PwC report to the committee.
A spokesperson for Senator Dastyari told ifa the report was received and circulated “to senators on the Economics Committee on Friday 10 July, including Senator Williams who is a ‘participating member’ of the committee.
“While we have the report in our possession, we will not be making it public, or commenting on its contents at this time,” the spokesperson said.
@ Teddy – I agree with all your remarks – however they assume that the enquiry is setting out to achieve something like protecting the public.
You know this isn’t the case – right ?
Hopefully, this time, the esteemed senators bother to learn the difference between TAL and IOOF (ie, two completely different and separate companies providing completely different products/services).
How they can conduct such an enquiry and yet not bother doing ANY research, or knowing that TAL (an insurance company) is not IOOF is just beyond me.
Not to mention their lack of understanding of basic HR rules and conventions. They couldn’t grasp that someone sharing their computer password gets a warning (a company policy breach but not a criminal act), whilst someone caught stealing bucketloads of private and personal data and files from IOOF, and refusing to return the stolen items, doesn’t get 3 warnings, instead they are fired for such a criminal act.
These senators have never held a real job and don’t grasp basic HR and ethical principles.
By all means – hold an enquiry – but those holding it need a basic level of competence and understanding of HR and of the company and industry they are looking into.
Really ? This is getting more than a little boring.