The audit profession has spent years talking about becoming more strategic. Deloitte’s latest outlook suggests that conversation is finally starting to turn into something operational.
Poland’s Office of Competition and Consumer Protection, known as UOKiK, said Thursday it had imposed a nearly $2.17 million (PLN 8.45 million) fine against Beliani after the company allegedly failed to cooperate with an ongoing investigation into its online sales practices.
The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority formally opened a Strategic Market Status investigation into Microsoft and the sprawling ecosystem surrounding products like Windows, Word, Excel, Teams, and Copilot. The regulator said it will examine whether Microsoft’s position in business software allows it to limit customer choice or weaken competition across adjacent markets.
The Dutch Data Protection Authority said this week that it has fined MLU BV, the Netherlands-based company behind the European version of the taxi app Yango, €100 million for unlawfully transferring personal data from Norway and Finland to Russia.
The Australian Federal Court case against Coles Supermarkets Australia was, on paper, about supermarket shelf pricing. In practice, it became something larger and more uncomfortable for corporate compliance teams. Because once a company trains consumers to trust a label, a slogan, or a pricing program, the legal question is no longer just what the numbers technically say. It becomes whether the overall impression being created can survive scrutiny.
The Federal Trade Commission has announced a $35 million settlement with Shutterstock, accusing the online licensing platform of quietly locking consumers into recurring charges while making it unnecessarily difficult to cancel subscriptions.
The fine that caught people's attention $78 million (PLN 339 million), split between an agricultural machinery company and the executives who ran it) wasn't the largest UOKiK imposed last year. It wasn't even close. But it was, in its way, the most instructive. Because the executives didn't argue they'd ordered the conduct. They argued they hadn't known about it. The court wasn't moved.