By Elizabeth Byrne

Topic: Courts

Thu 11 Jun 2026 at 6:54am

The Commonwealth Bank is being sued by its shareholders because the bank's share price dropped.

In short:

The bank's shareholders are taking the bank to court because they think they should get money back for the shares they bought at a high price.

The shareholders say the bank did not tell the market about a big fine, so they paid too much for their shares.

The shareholders tried to sue the bank before, but the court said they could not prove how much money they lost.

A big mistake by the Commonwealth Bank led to a large fine, and now the bank is in court.

The bank paid $700 million because it broke rules about stopping money laundering.

The bank did not report many big transactions, which is against the law.

The law says banks must report transactions over $10,000 within 10 business days.

The bank also did not check many accounts for money laundering.

The bank settled the case and paid the fine in 2018.

The bank knew about the problem before it was made public in 2017.

The shareholders are suing the bank because they think the bank should have told the market about the problem sooner.

The shareholders say they paid too much for their shares because the bank did not tell the market about the problem.

The share price dropped by $3.25 when the problem was announced.

The shareholders tried to sue the bank before, but the court said they could not prove how much money they lost.

The bank said it was sorry and spent $400 million to fix the problems.

The court said the shareholders could not prove how much money they lost.

The shareholders want the court to say that the bank was wrong to not tell the market about the problem.

The shareholders say they should get a reasonable estimate of how much money they lost.

The bank says the shareholders are wrong and should have proven how much of the share price drop was because of the bank's mistakes.

The bank says the court already decided that the shareholders did not prove how much money they lost.

The problem started with a mistake in the bank's computer system.

The bank says the problem was caused by a single mistake in the computer code.

The bank says it fixed the problem as soon as it found out about it.

The bank had another problem with a program to stop fraud, which also caused mistakes.

The bank fixed the problems and paid the fine.

The bank said it was sorry and spent $400 million to fix the problems.

Thu 11 Jun 2026 at 6:54am

Practice Listening