Australia’s leading class action litigator and Chairman of Australian law firm Maurice Blackburn, Mr Bernard Murphy will be the keynote speaker at a conference on social and environmental accounting being held at Charles Sturt University (CSU) in Albury-Wodonga.The leading Melbourne-based lawyer will address Australian and international social and environmental accounting academics and practitioners on the value of shareholder class actions to improve the environmental and social performance of corporations.
The 9th Annual Australasian Conference of the Centre for Social and Environmental Accounting Research (CSEAR) will be hosted on CSU’s award winning environmental campus by the University’s School of Accounting, which is based in the first six star accredited, energy efficient commercial building in Australia. The conference runs from Sunday 5 to Tuesday 7 December.
Mr Murphy specialises in class actions, having been involved in the first Australian case involving asbestosis. His work in shareholder activism has included such high profile cases as:
- the Aristocrat class action which resulted in Australia’s largest class action payout of $144.5 million;
- the GIO shareholder class action, which settled in August 2003 for $112 million in a breakthrough for corporate governance as it was the first successful shareholder class action in Australia; and
- the Vitamins cartel class action which settled in September 2006 for $41 million - the first successful cartel class action in Australia.
Mr Murphy has recently received considerable media attention as he is currently leading class action cases involving the banking sector and the charging of bank fees.
The CSEAR conference's theme - 'Getting the Balance right' - reflects the challenges facing the world in dealing with environmental and social pressures while the world economy recovers from financial crisis.
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