Gary capped off a busy November 2021 for excellent events by being invited to present at London’s 6th Annual Business Crime Conference.
This event is hosted by 33 Chancery Lane, a leading boutique set of barristers chambers in London well-known for financial wrongdoing cases. 33CL has run this wide-ranging Business Crime event for several years, hosted in the lovely and ancient (14th Century) surrounds of Gray’s Inn.
Coronavirus complications means Gary’s semi-annual business and conference speaking travel to the UK is off-limits for now. But a silver lining of this year’s event having to become a virtual online one is that the Business Crime Conference was able to include more cross-border participation.
So Gary was only too happy to join virtually from his home office, at 11pm NZ time, speaking on a panel about the strategic and legal implications of corporate self-reporting & engaging with the regulator/prosecutor:, entitled provocatively “What’s in it for the corporation?”
The discussion addressed a wide range of issues and areas of law, comparing competition law cartels and immunity programmes to whistle-blowing, financial regulatory regimes and the discovery by a company of fraud or corruption issues in its ranks.
Legal professional privilege, interview strategies, methods of initiating proffers and opening negotiations got a work-out – along with comparison of Serious Fraud Office tactics around the world, and the benefits of Deferred Prosecution Agreements. DPAs are a huge and contentious area in the UK, and slowly moving a step closer in Australia too. Will NZ follow suit?
These matters were especially topical in New Zealand, with two recent ANZ Bank cases to discuss, and the FMA’s Head of Enforcement during November 2021 providing the local regulator’s perspective in a ‘Self-Reporting does not avoid Liability’ speech.
Chaired by the effervescent Amanda Pinto QC (immediate past-President of the UK Bar Council) and speaking alongside Neil O’May from Norton Rose Fulbright and Eve Giles from Allen & Overy, Gary enjoyed the opportunity to chip in some chirpy Antipodean insights about regulatory developments in New Zealand and Australia.
Please contact Gary if you would like a copy of his Speaking Notes or a video of the presentation.
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