Securities Class Action Filed Down Under

An article in The West Australian today notes that shareholders of Multiplex Group (ASX: MXG) have filed a class action against the Australian property developer in The Federal Court of Australia in Melbourne.

According to the article, the litigation stems from the alleged failure of Multiplex to:

keep the market properly informed about problems it was having with the [redevelopment of London's Wembley Stadium] and the likely impact those problems would have on the company's profits.

Specifically, the complaint alleges:

Multiplex was behind schedule and had incurred cost overruns by August 2004, but did not announce the project would be making a loss until May 2005.

The complaint was filed on behalf of 45 investors by the Australian firm Maurice Blackburn Cashman Lawyers. The firm has a specific page devoted to the litigation, here.

Daily Trivia: For non-soccer fans, Wembley Stadium is perhaps best remembered as one of the two concert sites for Live Aid, the 1985 concert that sought to raise awareness of famine in Africa. According to this VH1 article, "an estimated 1.4 billion of the planet's five billion" tuned in to the concert that day, and more stunning still, "95 percent of the world's television sets were tuned in to" the concert at one point.