Fifth Avenue Finance Ltd (Fifth Avenue) is a large, publicly listed merchant bank holding an Australian Financial Services Licence. It operates both a corporate advisory business (the 'Advisory' division) and a securities trading business (the 'Trading' division). In order to safeguard the confidentiality of all corporate advice given to its clients by the corporate advisory division, and to avoid any conflicts of interest arising in trading the securities of its corporate clients, the two divisions of Fifth Avenue business are separated physically between two floors of a multi-story building in Sydney. The published protocols of Fifth Avenue make it clear to all employees that there must be no communication of any information between the two divisions. In order to maintain the integrity of each division of Fifth Avenue, while co-ordinating its general corporate activities, only the Head of the Corporate Advisory division (Aditi Sharma) and the Head of the securities Trading division (lan Leung) are permitted to communicate and exchange information regarding client advice and securities trading on behalf of clients. The two corporate officers, Aditi and lan, meet weekly for this purpose. Aditi is aware that one of her teams is advising a client, XYZ Ltd (XYZ), on its proposed takeover of Music Ears Ltd (Music Ears), a hearing aid manufacturer. She informs lan of this during their weekly meetings. Rodney, an employee in the trading division of Fifth Avenue who has recently acquired his AFSL, has not been told by lan or any other employee of Fifth Avenue of the advice Fifth Avenue is giving XYZ. However, he has learnt from his own independent research that XYZ intends to launch a takeover bid for Music Ears, a move that is certain to raise the price of Music Ears' shares. Acting on his own research, Rodney buys 10,000 shares in Music Ears on behalf of Fifth Avenue and Fifth Avenue makes a small profit of $20,000 on the sale of Music Ears shares as news of the takeover becomes known to the market. Advise Fifth Avenue, Aditi and Rodney as to whether they may have contravened the Insider Trading provisions under the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) and whether they may have any viable defence to any charge of insider trading (30 marks).