Lawyers tussle over confidential details of Ausgrid sale

Parties caught up in the ASIC action over allegations of insider trading in the Ausgrid sale have been told to detail what confidential information they want withheld from public airing.

The corporate regulator has been given until midday on Friday to hand over all but 14 transcripts to Westpac, as the two sides shape up for a fight over alleged Ausgrid insider trading.

The move comes after Justice Michael Lee ordered the Australian Securities and Investments Commission to hand over 65 transcripts from interviews with 26 current and former Westpac staff in May.

Lawyers for PMC Treasury have themselves been given until the end of the month to submit to the court their list of documents they think should be deemed confidential.

Lawyers had been seeking the judge make a suppression order over the entity of the transcripts tendered.

Several sides had submitted that the documents contained confidential information that if made public would risk commercial arrangements made at the time of the Ausgrid sale that were still in place.

However, Justice Lee had said there would be no need for flat suppression orders given his confidence legal parties would exercise judicious responsibility in their handling, or risk contempt of court.

“There is some urgency in requiring these documents to be provided to allow for a relatively truncated timetable to be complied with leading up to a hearing date in February next year,” he said.

“There’s no reason to believe that those barristers and solicitors are not well aware of their Hearne v Street obligations.”

Corrs Chambers Westgarth partner Abigail Gill, acting for AusSuper and IFM Investors, said some documents contained details of the 10-year transaction around the sale of Ausgrid which had “five years to run”.

“The scenario you’ve outlined would still be workable, the difficulty we’ve got is they’re not our documents,” she said.

The court battle comes after ASIC charged Westpac with insider trading over the $12bn interest rate swap linked to the part-privatisation in 2016 of the NSW electricity distribution network Ausgrid.

ASIC has alleged key Westpac personnel used inside information to trade in interest rate derivatives in the two hours before it executed the swap, the largest in Australia’s history.

The regulator alleged Westpac withheld key information from the market that it would be executing the transaction when its staff started trading.

Westpac is due to return its responses to ASIC by July 14, with the full hearing of the case set down for February 7, 2022.