Qantas detailed thousands of cancelled flights days before Joyce share sale

afr.com:

Qantas supplied the competition regulator with details of more than 10,000 flights it had cancelled three days before its chairman, Richard Goyder, allowed former chief executive Alan Joyce to sell shares worth $17 million.

Mr Joyce sold more than 90 per cent of his holding in the company on June 1, with Mr Goyder’s approval, despite the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission having made two requests for information about flights that the airline kept on sale after they had been cancelled.

The regulator is now suing Qantas in the Federal Court, alleging that it engaged in false, misleading or deceptive conduct by advertising flights it would not fly.

The ACCC says Qantas’ defence misses the point.  Bloomberg

Documents filed in the Federal Court on Wednesday by Baker McKenzie, the law firm acting for the ACCC, show that on May 29, Qantas had supplied the regulator with a spreadsheet containing the more than 10,000 flights on which the case now hinges. The ACCC eventually excluded flights where consumers were informed within two calendar days, the documents show.

The Australian Financial Review earlier revealed that Qantas had received compulsory information notices – which require companies to hand over documents – on April 26, five weeks before Mr Joyce’s share sale. There are also no rules preventing directors trading shares, unless they are acting on undisclosed information that they know is material to the price.

There has been some investor disquiet about the share sale, even before the ACCC filed its legal proceedings. One fund manager, Centennial Asset Management’s Matthew Kidman, previously said Mr Joyce should have waited “until he departed the company in November”.

Mr Joyce sold the shares for about