Federal Court fines record $15m former ASX-listed firm

Oksana Patron

20 February 2023

The Federal Court has fined GetSwift, a former ASX-listed software company which is now in liquidation, record $15 million and disqualified its directors for breaching continuous disclosure laws.

GetSwift’s former director, chief executive and executive chairman, Bane Hunter, and former director, Joel Macdonald, were ordered to pay $2 million and $1 million, respectively, and were disqualified from managing corporations for 15- and 12-years.

Additionally, Brett Eagle, a former director of GetSwift, has been ordered to pay $75,000 and was disqualified from managing corporations for two years.

All three former directors have been also ordered to pay ASIC’s costs.

According to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC), these were two of the highest penalties ordered against directors for corporate misconduct.

In November 2021, the Court found that GetSwift made numerous misleading statements in its announcements on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) and breached its continuous disclosure obligations on 22 occasions between February and December 2017.

In January 2021, GetSwift delisted from the ASX and re-domiciled to Canada’s NEO Exchange after the Federal Court approved GetSwift’s scheme of arrangement to create a new Canadian holding company, GetSwift Technologies Ltd (Holdco), despite ASIC opposing the scheme.

As such, from January 2021, GetSwift was no longer listed on the ASX.

In August 2022, GetSwift was placed in voluntary liquidation by Holdco.

The Court described GetSwift as a company that ‘became a market darling because it adopted an unlawful public-relations-driven approach to corporate disclosure instigated and driven those wielding power within the company.’

Justice Lee found Mr Hunter ‘had a laser-like focus on making money for himself and Mr Macdonald and if that involved breaking the law regulating financial markets, or exposing GetSwift to third party liability, that was of little concern to him.’

According to its Linkedin profile, the company offers “a suite of software products and services focused on business and logistics automation, data management and analysis, communications, information security, and infrastructure optimisation and also includes ecommerce and marketplace ordering, workforce management, data analytics and augmentation, business intelligence, rout optimisation, cash management, task management, shift management, asset tracking, real-time alerts, cloud communications, and communications infrastructure”.