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- Amanda Kim Banton (born 26 July 1970) is an Australian lawyer who specialises in corporate litigation, particularly matters involving complex financial instruments and insolvency based disputes. Until March 2020 she was a partner in the Sydney office of global business law firm Squire Patton Boggs. Banton is the currently the Managing Partner of Banton Group, a firm she established in 2020. Banton Group specializes in large commercial dispute resolution, class actions, restructuring and insolvency litigation and advisory matters. Banton is best known for successfully representing a range of religious organisations, charities and local government authorities seeking redress for losses suffered after they purchased "toxic" financial products created and sold by various financial institutions, including Lehman Brothers and ABN Amro. She is also the first and only lawyer to successfully win judgement against a ratings agency (Standard & Poor's) for misrating such products as AAA. Between October 2014 and March 2016 Banton filed a number of further class actions against Standard & Poor's alleging misleading and deceptive conduct and negligence by S&P. Those claims were amended in October 2017 to allege deceit against S&P. Those matters were settled in May 2018 for $215 million. The Court approved the settlement in August 2018. In 2014 Banton also filed a class action law suit against another ratings firm, Fitch Ratings, alleging that the firm "had engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct and was negligence in giving AAA and AA ratings to certain collateralized debt obligations known as Palladin AAA and Palladin AA." Fitch settled pre-trial in September 2019 for AU$27 million, representing the recovery of about 95% of the losses incurred by the plaintiffs, and is believed to be (in percentage terms), one of the largest settlements achieved pre-trial in Australia. Amanda's practice encompasses a broad range of corporate and commercial litigation matters, with a particular emphasis on matters relating to the Corporations Act, insolvency, state and federal trade practices legislation, negligence and contractual disputes. Amanda acted for the Dr and Mrs Dyczynski in a case which arose for the shooting down of MH17. The Full Federal Court has upheld the appeal brought by Dr and Mrs Dyczynski, the parents who lost their daughter on board the MH17 Malaysian Airlines crash, against their exclusion from a class action settlement brought by LHD Lawyers on behalf of family members of victims of the crash. In the Australasian Law Awards 2021, Banton was awarded an Excellence Award in the Law Firm Leader of the Year and Banton Group was awarded an Excellence Award in the Law Firm of the Year. (en)
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