ASIC takes action against

After a long time during which ASIC has been accused of being too lenient on enforcement issues, action is taken against auditors involved in a corporate collapse.

THREE partners of accountancy giant KPMG have been banned from acting as auditors for periods of up to two years over their involvement in the $390 million collapse of the Westpoint property empire.

Can the ASX stay a monopoly?

It's long been argued that there's no compelling reason (or even good reason) for ASX to remain a monopoly provider. Here's another; an ROE of 70% for it's latest results. Have a look at Adele Ferguson's story.

Blame ASIC?

ASIC's chairman argues that ASIC should not be blamed for recent upheavals in the market (oh, other than the short selling stuff). It's an interesting one, though. To what extent should we, and can we, regulate against bad business decision, and bad investment decisions? However, even acknowledging that we can't protect all against all of their bad decisions doesn't mean that companies should be able to go around breaching disclosure rules and the like, seemingly without any meaningful penalty.

Opes, short sales and market transparency

John Durie in The Oz highlights the issues that ASIC faces in dealing with matters like the Opes collapse. As Duries suggests, avoiding regulatory buck-passing is the key.

Several firms engaged in stock lending offered last year to provide information about their practices to the ASX. The ASX, in its infinite wisdom, said it did not know what it could do with the information. One interpretation: we can't make money out of knowing this, so don't tell us.

Who's to blame?

Michael West summarises the gnashing of teeth about the current 'meltdown'.

Key paragraph:

There is a pattern to these implosions. Every company - Centro, Allco, MFS and now ABC Learning - have five things in common: greed, leverage, risk, suspect corporate governance and complex corporate structures.

and also:

Moreover, on transparency, we won't hear too much from the ASX as it has made a mockery of transparency by kowtowing to the big investment bank clients and making the broker identities on its own trading system anonymous. Its own disclosure is not good enough.

To ASIC, the corporate watchdog; both its bite and bark are small.

There's a book in the reasons why but one is cultural. The SEC in the US is a far more rigorous sheriff.

Let's see how much changes.

ASX - regulator and profit-maker

In Australia, the ASX is both the regulator of the stock exchange, as well as a for-profit entity trading on the exchange. It's obvious that there is a conflict of interest in these two roles. The conflict is nicely canvassed here.

Citibank and insider trading

A good day for Citibank; turns out that the Supreme Court did not think they were breaching 'Chinese Walls' with respect to their advice to, and trading on, Toll Holding during their takeover bid for Patrick: see SMH link here.

ASIC can't be happy about this. We'll see what their new Chairman, Tony D'Alosio does in response to this.