Phi Finney McDonald has stepped up its investigation into a potential shareholder class action against Corporate Travel Management Limited (CTM) and its former auditor, PwC Australia, adding another unwelcome item to a corporate itinerary already crowded with turbulence.
The law firm says its investigation is “well advanced” and concerns CTM financial reporting from 2020 to 2024. Any class action, if ultimately filed, would allege that CTM misled investors through annual financial reports and failed to meet continuous disclosure obligations under the Corporations Act. PwC Australia would also face allegations that it engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct and made false statements about audits of CTM’s accounts.
The official Phi Finney McDonald investigation notice is available here: Phi Finney McDonald – Corporate Travel investigation.
For shareholders, the timing could hardly be more bruising. CTM’s securities were suspended from quotation on 26 August 2025 while the company dealt with potential rectification and restatement of earlier financial statements. CTM announced reinstatement on 2 September 2026, with trading resuming the following day after roughly 13 months on the sidelines.
The market’s verdict was not subtle. CTM shares, which last traded at $16.07 before the suspension, closed their first day back at about $2.32, down roughly 86 per cent. It was less a soft landing than a trapdoor.
Phi Finney McDonald Principal Lawyer Roop Sandhu said:
“Investors have a right to expect that financial statements from their listed investments are a true and fair reflection of the company’s performance.
They are rightfully concerned about what has happened to their investments in Corporate Travel, after a long term suspension and subsequent shattering of the share price.
Likewise, investors have a right to assume that an auditor’s standards meet the relevant legislation and regulatory requirements.”
Sandhu’s comments have also been reported independently in substantially the same terms.
CTM, headquartered in Brisbane, operates corporate travel businesses across Australia and New Zealand, North America, Asia and Europe. Its FY26 results provide an important counterweight to the legal storm: revenue and other income rose 4 per cent to $669.9 million, underlying EBITDA climbed 36 per cent to $113.6 million, and net profit after tax reached $17.7 million. CTM also reported that about 78 per cent of customer refunds had been agreed or were close to finalisation.
CTM’s official investor announcements and financial reports are available through its Investor Centre.
Those figures offer evidence of operational recovery, but the legal and reputational questions are far from packed away. Phi Finney McDonald’s investigation centres on whether investors acquired CTM shares at an allegedly inflated price because of financial reporting now under scrutiny.
However, an important distinction remains. This is presently an investigation into a potential class action. At the time of writing, Phi Finney McDonald had not filed the proposed action, and no court had made findings that CTM or PwC Australia engaged in the alleged conduct.
For the travel industry, the story matters well beyond one company’s battered share price. CTM is a major global travel management group, and the affair has dragged the usually dry subjects of audit quality, disclosure and financial controls firmly into the boarding lounge.
Investors will now be watching two departure boards at once: how CTM continues rebuilding its business and where the lawyers go next.
By: Jill Walsh – © 2026.
Read Time: 2 minutes.
Author Bio:
Jill Walsh has always kept a pen close and a suitcase closer. She started out on media releases, then learned the trade properly by escorting press trips around the world, discovering which stories travel well and which need a sharper edit.
Before long, she wasn’t just promoting destinations; she was representing them, translating civic ambition and local pride into words people actually wanted to read. These days, semi-retired and happily so, Jill has traded departure boards for deadlines, joining old friend and colleague Stephen at Global Travel Media on a casual basis.
Her patch is the business end of wanderlust: balance sheets, route maps, tender wins and the numbers that quietly decide where travellers go. She writes with dry humour, clean prose and an old-school respect for facts a steady voice when the market starts shouting.
