ASIC bans ‘financial adviser’ for six years
A man who falsely held out that he was authorised to engage in discretionary trading has been banned from providing financial services for six years.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) announced today that the ‘financial adviser’, Rodney Peters of Mudgeeraba on the Gold Coast, had been banned because he represented to clients that he had authority to engage in discretionary trading when this was not the case.
It said that Peters had previously been a director Australian Share Registry Pty Ltd and both he and Australian Share Registry were authorised representatives of Pulse Markets Pty Ltd between March 2015 and May 2016.
ASIC said that Pulse was not authorised to engage in discretionary trading but only to provide general advice and to trade in equities options and derivatives.
An ASIC delegate determined that Peters in engaging in excess of 1,000 options trades on behalf of a number of clients between April 2015 and April 2016 had not complied with financial services law.
ASIC found that Peters was aware that he could not engage in discretionary trading but decided to do so, and further that his conduct was likely to cause clients to assume that he did have authority to engage in this kind of trading.
The ASIC announcement said the regulator’s decision reflected its intention to remove from the industry financial advisors who do not comply with the law, so consumers could make more confident and informed decisions about their financial dealings”.
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