ASIC deterrence becomes credible

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has flagged adopting a similar approach to its British counterpart in pursuing “credible deterrence”.

ASIC commissioner Belinda Gibson has used an address to the Committee for the Economic Development of Australia to flag the regulator’s approach and confirmed that, in league with the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions, it was already considering action against 12 people with respect to insider trading.

At the same time, Gibson said that the regulator had this year issued three continuous disclosure infringement notices whereas in the previous four years it had only issued a total of eight similar notices.

“So we have already seen a significant step up in enforcement activity,” she said.

Elsewhere in her address, Gibson reinforced the need for publicly-listed companies to be more scrupulous in meeting their reporting obligations, particularly where directors tried to manage the timing of the release of results by delaying the finalisation of accounts.

She also referred to the progress of ASIC’s Project Mint, which is investigating whether markets were affected by short selling on the back of false rumours of collusive behaviour.

“I can say that there is evidence of some suspicious trading activity, though more limited than was rumoured to be the case at the time,” she said. “We served some 71 notices on all the major brokers, requiring the delivery of share trading records and broker communications.

“We are currently working through some 580,000 e-mails and 220 broker voice recordings,” Gibson said.