There are serious questions to be asked about the ASX and its regulators
The ASX is a monopoly. Quiet regulators after a series of missteps risk harm for everyday investors.
At a recent regional capital markets conference in Armenia, delegates from exchanges across Central Asia chuckled at the spectacle of Australia’s main securities market. Their amusement was not simply at the ASX’s catalogue of calamities, rather at the contrast.
In their countries, a financial write-off, even a fraction of the ASX’s $250 million CHESS replacement debacle, would likely have seen directors and executives in handcuffs. In Australia, it triggered little more than a strike against ASX’s remuneration report.
Back on Bridge Street in Sydney, the farce continues.
The latest episode was a “human error” that saw a market announcement mis-tagged, confusing TPG the private equity firm with TPG Telecom, the telecommunications company. Yet it was not the blunder itself that scandalised observers, rather the astonishingly lethargic response from ASX once the mistake was discovered.
In any truly competitive industry, ASX’s repeated failures would have seen the operator swiftly replaced. The ASX, however, is no ordinary business. The ASX is a monopoly, protected by regulators who shield it from the normal forces that punish incompetence.
