the Sydney-based financial institution is expected to pay about $87 million in compensation to clients whom the bank’s financial advisers had failed to notify regarding various trading news between 2005 and 2019. This corporate news involves those on share purchase plans, share buybacks and takeovers of publicly listed companies, which means the clients may have missed out on various share trading opportunities, including chances of receiving tax benefits from selling shares or buying shares at discounted prices.
According to the Australian Securities regulator about 32,000 customer accounts may have missed an estimated 328,000 corporate action notifications. Most of these affected customers are expected to be compensated by Westpac by the end of this year.
