ASIC to ease listed scheme buy-backs

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has announced that it will be developing a policy aimed at making it easier to undertake buy-backs of interest in listed registered schemes.

The regulator said the policy would take into account industry concerns that existing regulation of buy-back offers for managed investments schemes made it difficult for the schemes to use the capital management techniques available to listed companies.

Announcing the intended policy change, ASIC executive director of regulation Malcolm Rodgers said that in developing its final policy, the regulator would seek to balance the two main factors — maintaining the special protections the law provides for holders of interest in managed investment schemes and the need for funds competing in an increasingly global market to have available some of the capital management techniques available to listed companies.

“Our preliminary thinking is that the availability of a reliable pricing mechanism through trading on the Australian Stock Exchange provides a way of balancing the interests of both exiting and remaining fund members,” he said.

Rodgers said that, in the interim, ASIC would consider any applications for relief in relation to market buy-backs by listed schemes on a case-by-case basis.