ASIC okays Corps Act relief
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has approved nearly 500 applications for relief from provisions of federal legislation during the past September quarter with a further 124 applications refused or withdrawn after they were received by the regulator.
ASIC has the authority to modify or set aside certain provisions of the Corporations Act and the National Credit Act and stated it received 746 applications for relief from 1 June to 30 September 2014 with 474 of these applications being approved. Of the 124 applications which were not approved 35 were refused and 89 were withdrawn by the applicants with the remaining 148 applications decided outside of this period.
While ASIC has supplied the total number of applications received and approved it did not break the numbers down into the various sectors of the two acts despite ASIC being able to provide relief in the areas of officers and employees (Chapter 2D of the Corporations Act, meetings (2G), financial reporting and audit (2M), managed investment schemes (5C), takeovers (6), fundraising (6D) and financial services (7).
ASIC stated the report detailing the relief was instead designed "to improve the level of transparency and the quality of publicly available information about decisions ASIC makes when asked to exercise its discretionary powers to grant relief".
While the quarterly report provided key examples ASIC said these were to "demonstrate how ASIC has applied its policy in practice which ASIC thinks will be of particular interest for capital market participants and for participants in the financial services industry".
"This report does not provide details of every single decision made in the period. It is intended to provide examples of decisions that demonstrate how we have applied our policy in practice."
"Prospective applicants for relief may gain a better insight into the factors we take into account in deciding whether to exercise our discretion to grant relief."
AUTHOR
Jason Spits
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