Ex-Macquarie funds manager banned
A former director of Macquarie Agricultural Funds Management Ltd (MAFM) has been banned from providing financial services for six years.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) revealed that in early 2011 Timothy Hornibrook, along with some members of the MAFM sales team conceived the concept of a fake family office, named the Brook Family Office (BFO), that was used to extract confidential information from competitors in the agricultural investment sector.
"Between May 2011 and March 2013, the sales team used two BFO email addresses to send emails to at least nine competitor fund managers based in Australia and overseas, all of which were known by the sales team to be direct competitors of MAFML," ASIC said.
"The emails purported to come from the BFO and contained a ‘request for information' document containing a list of questions, which sought information from MAFM's competitors such as company background, investment process, fund performance and fees.
"The sales team intended to use the information obtained by the BFO in order to give MAFML and/or MCP a commercial advantage against its competitors."
ASIC found that Hornibrook had breached his duties as an officer of a responsible entity of a registered managed investment scheme by:
- Failing to act honestly;
- Misusing the information he acquired as a director of MAFML in order to gain an improper advantage for himself, MAFML and/or Macquarie Crop Partners LP (MCP); and
- Misusing his position as director of MAFML to gain an advantage for MAFML and/or MCP.
ASIC Commissioner Greg Tanzer said that "The deceptive conduct of Mr Hornibrook was not inadvertent nor was it the result of a momentary lapse".
"It was committed over a number of years and was intended to gain an advantage for himself and the Macquarie business for which he was responsible," Tanzer said.
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