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10 Lessons from 10 Years of Forensic & Litigation Consulting in Australia

Since 2014, our Australian Forensic & Litigation Consulting team has played a critical role in helping clients navigate high-stake matters, transactions and regulatory challenges, with skills spanning dispute advisory, risk & investigations, forensic accounting, expert witness testimony, data analytics, valuations and cybersecurity. As we celebrate this milestone, our team members reflect on the challenging matters that have shaped us and, more importantly, resulted in positive outcomes for our clients. These experiences have reinforced the value of the lessons we've learned and the critical role that trusted, multidisciplinary expertise plays in guiding legal strategy and uncovering the truth.

Australian Forensic & Litigation Consulting experts at FTI Consulting share their most valuable lessons from a decade of supporting complex legal and regulatory matters, providing insights into practical strategies to strengthen legal approach and achieve successful outcomes.

Lesson 1: Lessons from Lifeplan: How Forensic Experts Bolster Legal Strategy

“It was a high-stakes case where a robust financial model and effective collaboration between legal and forensic experts helped set a groundbreaking precedent for claims for an account of profits.” — Marcin Smalec, Senior Director, Forensic & Litigation Consulting, Australia

10 years on, FTI Consulting’s work on Lifeplan Australia Friendly Society Ltd v Woff still offers rich and relevant insights into the intersection of forensic expert evidence and legal strategy and into claims for ‘future profit’ in an ‘account of profits’. Read more here.

Lesson 2: How a ‘Dirty’ Expert Helps Clean up Your Accounting Evidence

“In one matter, we discovered the claimed losses were based on data that had been double-counted - a mistake that could have cost millions.” — Uriel Koloditzky, Senior Director, Forensic & Litigation Consulting, Australia

Forensic accountants Dawna Wright and Uriel Koloditzky draw from their experiences on past engagements to showcase the impact a consulting expert can have on the assumptions, calculations, reports and ultimately the outcome of a matter. Read more here.

Lesson 3: How Data Analytics Makes the Difference in Expert Matters

“When used correctly, data analytics can consolidate disparate datasets, highlight key areas of focus and extract useful insights which otherwise would have been lost in the unorganised chaos of voluminous data.” — Joanna Yeung, Senior Director, Forensic & Litigation Consulting, Australia

A forensic accountant typically analyses accounting or financial data in a dispute or investigation context to investigate or quantify a financial issue. But as datasets grow exponentially larger and increasingly complex, the questions clients ask us are equally complex. This is where data analytics is useful — and, frankly, is now an essential tool for your forensic accountants to get to the answer. Read more here.

Lesson 4: Getting to the Truth: How a Cybersecurity Investigation Uncovered the Root Cause of a Ransomware Breach

“We not only uncovered the root cause of the attack but gave the client and its legal counsel the evidence needed to pursue legal recourse.” — Wouter Veugelen, Senior Managing Director, Head of Cybersecurity, Australia

When a major architecture firm suffered a ransomware attack, it turned to its managed security service provider for answers. But months later, key questions remained: How did the attackers access the system? Were third party vendors responsible? Read more here.

Lesson 5: Valuing “True Value” in Post-Acquisition Disputes

“A forensic accountant’s role in assessing loss in a misleading or deceptive conduct case is to uncover what an asset was truly worth. ‘True value’ is not always what the market says, but what the asset’s real, intrinsic worth would have been had the truth been known.” — Michael Kanan, Managing Director, Forensic & Litigation Consulting, Australia

Unlike standard valuation methodologies grounded only in valuation principles, true value is a legal construct - defined and applied by courts for the purpose of assessing damages. Understanding the concept of true value is especially important for lawyers as they work with expert witnesses on damages matters relating to misleading or deceptive conduct. Read more here.

Lesson 6: In the Driver’s Seat: Learnings From the Automotive Industry

“We looked at multiple large financial models for dealerships, but through detailed analysis we were able to trace the inputs, customise the outputs and create meaningful discussions” — Vincent McGuire, Senior Director, Forensic & Litigation Consulting, Australia

No two dealerships are alike… Each dealership operates under its own unique set of circumstances and even those within the same franchise group can differ markedly in financial performance and business structure. For those involved in valuation, loss assessment, or commercial disputes, it’s important to appreciate the nuanced nature of this industry. Read more here.

Lesson 7: Under the Guillotine: Inside a High-Stakes Expert Report Deadline

“In high-stakes proceedings, where intense deadlines and pressure leave no room for error, a forensic accounting expert who moves fast, thinks critically and communicates clearly can be the difference between a favourable settlement and writing a multi-million dollar cheque.” — Rhys Horwill, Senior Director, Forensic & Litigation Consulting, Australia

Forensic accountants Dawna Wright and Rhys Horwill share how a recent health care matter highlighted the risks of relying on flawed assumptions and reinforced the importance of stepping back to first principles to critically evaluate the opposing expert's overall methodology. Read more here.

Lesson 8: How Experts Navigate the Complexities of an Account of Profits

“While quantifying an account of profits may seem straightforward, it presents complex challenges. Without expertise, it can be miscalculated and fail to reflect the defendant’s actual profit from wrongful conduct.” — Melinda Bowman, Managing Director, Forensic & Litigation Consulting, Australia

In recent years, we have seen a notable rise in legal proceedings that require quantifying an account of profits in addition to damages. There are six complexities which can potentially arise in an assessment of an account of profits. To find out what they are, read here.

Lesson 9: The Paradox of Progress: How a Decade of Financial Reform Created Both Clarity and Complexity

“The challenge isn’t individual regulations; it’s managing their intersections. Institutions succeed when they treat regulatory compliance as integrated risk management, not a checklist exercise.” — Natalie Faulkner, Senior Managing Director, Leader of Australia Risk & Investigations and Mark Gossington, Senior Managing Director, Forensic & Litigation Consulting, Australia

Over the past decade, FTI Consulting’s work advising financial institutions through major regulatory transformations has revealed a critical insight: comprehensive regulatory reform, while achieving its policy objectives, often creates unintended operational complexity that can undermine compliance effectiveness. This analysis examines how Australia’s regulatory evolution has created both opportunities and challenges for institutional risk management. Read here.

Stay tuned: The last article in the series, Purchase Price Adjustments, will be added here shortly.

Dawna Wright

Senior Managing Director, Head of Australia Forensic & Litigation Consulting

Dawna Wright specialises in the interpretation of complex data and financial information and providing expert opinions for non-financial clients, particularly lawyers and Boards of Directors. Dawna has over 25 years of experience in auditing and forensic accounting, and clients value her accessibility and her hands-on approach.

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Wouter Veugelen

Senior Managing Director, Head of Cybersecurity, Australia

Wouter Veugelen is an information security and technology expert and former Chief Information Security Officer (‘CISO’) with more than 20 years of international professional experience in cybersecurity and technology strategy, program delivery, operations, due diligence, offensive security, incident response and complex investigations.

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Michael Kanan

Managing Director

Michael has extensive experience in expert witness and consulting expert roles and provides advice to clients, their legal advisers and the courts on contentious business, finance and accounting matters to help resolve disputes. Michael’s independent expert, consulting expert, and expert determination assignments often require the application of business valuation or economic loss quantification methods, including financial modelling and cost of capital analysis.

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Vincent McGuire

Senior Director

Vincent McGuire specialises in the provision of forensic accounting and consulting services, assessing loss and damage for the purposes of litigation. Vincent’s experience allows him to assess, collate and action information from both data and people to effectively identify, diagnose and solve problems.

Contact Vincent McGuire

Joanna Yeung

Senior Director

Joanna Yeung is a Chartered Accountant with more than 16 years of experience in complex fraud investigations, compliance reviews, asset tracing and assistance in disputes and accounting expert witness engagements. She specialises in conducting financial investigations through the use of forensic accounting and data analytics.

Contact Joanna Yeung

Uriel Koloditzky

Senior Director

Uriel Koloditzky offers a wide range of experience in the context of disputes and litigation, including quantifying economic loss and damage and analysing complex accounting and finance technical issues. Uriel is a Chartered Accountant and Forensic Accounting Specialist with over seven years of experience, helping clients solve financial issues across both independent expert witness and consulting expert matters.

Contact Uriel Koloditzky

Marcin Smalec

Senior Director

Marcin Smalec is a forensic accounting specialist with more than 12 years of experience quantifying loss, valuing businesses and conducting complex financial investigations. Marcin has worked on disputes and regulatory matters in Australia and internationally, including class actions, post-acquisition claims and fraud investigations.

Contact Marcin Smalec

Rhys Horwill

Senior Director

Rhys Horwill is a Chartered Accountant specialising in forensic accounting, with expertise in quantifying economic loss and valuing businesses. With nearly 11 years of experience, he has managed the preparation of independent expert reports and advised legal teams, corporates and government clients on complex, high-value matters.

Contact Rhys Horwill

Melinda Bowman

Managing Director

Melinda Bowman is a Managing Director in the Forensic and Litigation Consulting team of FTI Consulting and is based in Melbourne, Australia. Melinda is a forensic accountant with 20 years’ experience specialising in loss and damage quantification and financial investigations.

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Mark Gossington

Senior Managing Director

Mark Gossington helps financial services clients navigate complex governance, risk management and compliance issues in the face of regulatory-driven change. He regularly supports boards, chief risk officers (‘CROs’) and senior executives in responding to regulatory reviews and investigations, including enforceable undertakings and skilled person reviews.

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Natalie Faulkner

Senior Managing Director, Leader of Australia Risk & Investigations

Natalie Faulkner specialises in assisting clients with fraud, corruption and scam prevention, detection and complex investigations, as well as consumer remediation, contract cost recovery, accounting records reconstruction and litigation support.

Read more