ASIC ousts Melbourne adviser for a decade

By Rebecca Evans

THE Australian Securities and InvestmentsCommission (ASIC) has had a win in the Federal Court with a former East Melbourne financial adviser banned from the industry for 10 years and prohibited from managing a corporation for three years.

Tony Marshall Bell and four of his companies have been the subject of proceedings brought by ASIC back in October 2002.

ASIC alleged that Bell and the four corporate defendants, of which he was a director, had operated managed investment schemes that were required to be registered without doing so, and made offers of securities to clients without disclosure documents for the offers being lodged with ASIC.

Bell consented to the orders imposing the bans, after the parties were ordered by the court to enter into mediation.

Bell and two of the four corporate defendants, Strategic Project Marketing (SPM) and Marshall Bell Hawkins (MBH), also agreed to pay an amount towards ASIC’s court costs and the costs of the court-ordered receiverships of the other two corporate defendants to this proceeding, Private Equity Asset Management and Spinofrere.

The order follows a separate proceeding held on April 27, 2004, that the Private Equity Asset Management and Spinofrere be wound-up on the grounds that they were insolvent.

ASIC’s action against SPM continues and the interim orders made by the court in December 2002, preventing MBH and SPM from dealing with their assets otherwise than in the ordinary course of business, continue in effect.

The matter will reappear before the court on September 17, 2004.