TP04/105
The Takeovers Panel announced today that it has published a revised version of its Guidance Note 11 on Conflicts of Interest.
Guidance Note 11 sets out the principles that the Panel and its members apply when assessing potential conflicts of interest which might arise for Panel members when the President of the Panel selects Panel members to sit on proceedings before the Panel, or during those proceedings. The Guidance Note is designed to explain the process the Panel undertakes to ensure that conflicts of interest are appropriately dealt with, that parties are afforded procedural fairness and that the Panel complies with its obligations under the ASIC Act.
The Panel took care to point out that each decision before it is decided on the circumstances of each particular case, and that although the Panel’s Guidance Notes are very good guidance, the unpredictability of future issues means that Guidance Notes cannot be relied upon to provide absolute answers for 100% of future cases.
The Panel advised that like some other minor reviews of Guidance Notes, it has not published Guidance Note 11 in a draft form for comment as it considers that the changes that it has made are not substantive and involve no change of policy. Rather the changes are part of the Panel’s planned process of reviewing the currency and consistency of its Guidance Notes. The types of changes which the Panel has made include adding recent matters as examples of the policy issues discussed. The Panel noted that it had reissued Guidance Notes 2 to 6 and 8 to 10 in July this year and Guidance Note 01 on Unacceptable Circumstances in September of this year. Similarly, the Panel considered that those Guidance Notes had received merely updating rather than substantive change and did not publish them as drafts for comment.
While it has not published the document as a draft, the Panel advised that it would, as always, be interested to receive comments on the revised version of Guidance Note 11.
A copy of the revised Guidance Note 11 is available on the Panel’s website: Guidance.
Nigel Morris
Director, Takeovers Panel
Level 47, 80 Collins Street
Melbourne, VIC 3000
Ph: +61 3 9655 3501
nigel.morris@takeovers.gov.au