Case Study Report: Breach of Contract by Antares

Case study report
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FACTS
The case is related to the breach of contract filed under the Federal Court of Australia. The Case
is between the (ASIC), Australian securities and Investments Commission and Big Star Energy
Ltd. The ASIC puts an allegation on ANTARES that it failed to disclose the relevant information
regarding the sale of Big Star Assets. At the time when it entered into the two sale agreement via
ASX, it neither revealed the details of the purchaser nor stated the financial details. Another
important consideration related to the case is that after the announcement was made, there was a
sudden increase in the share price of Antares (Ramsay and Saunders, 2019). It was noticed that
ASX made a request to Antares for the disclosure of the name of the purchaser, it refused saying
that it would threaten the sale completion. Mr Cruickshank was the director of Antares who was
involved in the breach of continuous disclosure of the information at the time of agreement. Mr
Cruickshank failed to discharge the duty as the director of the company. There could be a
possibility where the purchaser had asked not to disclose his information in case he is not liable
to the financial approval for the two sale agreements.
ISSUE
The issue raised before the federal court was regarding the disclosure of important information
that Antares was unable to provide at time of the public announcement which came under the
breach of the contracts (Fayyad, 2019). Antares must have disclosed the name of the potential
purchaser or the director of the company should have revealed that the agreement was not having
financial approval. Big star was not verified independently under the capacity of purchase to
complete the legal requirements. ASIC also pointed to the director of the company that he was
not able to exercise complete power and was failed towards discharging his duty towards
Antares. The company breached the policies of ASIC under section 180 of the corporations act.
The other issue related to the contradiction was that Mr Cruickshank disagreed to the fact that he
was involved in this contravention. He told that he took all the reasonable steps to comply with
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