Australian share market follows Wall St lower; The Star Entertainment

The Australian share market has fallen, after losses on Wall Street on Friday, with casino stocks taking a dive.

By 12:40pm AEDT, the ASX 200 was 0.4 per cent lower, at 7,290.7 points.

Shares had been deeper in the red earlier in the session but pared back their losses as mining and banking stocks turned positive.

The worst-performing stock on the benchmark index was casino operator The Star Entertainment Group.

Its shares dropped 19.2 per cent to $3.46 after it responded to media reports, which it described as “misleading”.

Allegations published in Nine’s The Age and Sydney Morning Herald describe “suspected money laundering, organised crime, large-scale fraud and foreign interference” enabled by The Star.

In a statement to the stock exchange, The Star said it “was concerned by a number of assertions within the media reports that it considers misleading”.

“There are constraints on publicly discussing specific individuals. We will take the appropriate steps to address all allegations with relevant state and federal regulators and authorities,” the company said.

The Star Sydney casino is currently being reviewed by the New South Wales Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority.

Other casino stocks also fell, including Skycity Entertainment Group (-4.1pc) and Crown Resorts (-2.8pc).

CBA faces court action over underpayments

After falling in early trade, bank stocks were mostly higher midway through the session.

Commonwealth Bank shares were up by 0.3 per cent.

That’s despite the Fair Work Ombudsman announcing it has launched court action against CBA and CommSec for underpaying nearly 7,500 workers to the tune of $16.4 million.

The FWO said CBA had notified it of the contraventions in 2019 after a company-wide compliance review.

“We allege that CBA and CommSec failed to meet their lawful obligations to ensure employees were better off, overall, which led to thousands of CBA and CommSec employees across the country being financially disadvantaged year after year,” Fair Work Ombudsman Sandra Parker said.

The Federal Court proceedings allege staff were paid less than their lawful entitlements between October 2015 and December last year.

In a statement, CBA acknowledged the proceedings and said “any instance of employees not being paid their correct entitlements is unacceptable”.

It said systems and processes had been strengthened in the two years since it had reported the issues to the FWO.

The bank is in the process of paying back staff, which it says is “substantially complete”.

In December 2019, CBA revealed it had repaid around $28 million to 41,000…