ASX shares slide as ASIC opens CHESS outage investigation
Make us a preferred source
Make us a preferred source on Google
More news: Shares in the Australian Securities Exchange lowered after the Australian Securities and Investments Commission opened an investigation into an outage in the bourse operator's batch settlement process in December.
ASX shares were down 1.7% to $62.38 by 1:20pm AEDT, roughly tracking a decline in the ASX 200 index.
ASIC opens investigation into ASX CHESS outage in December
The news: The corporate regulator has opened an investigation into an outage in the batch settlement process of the Australian Securities Exchange on 20 December.
The context: The bourse operator on Monday confirmed that the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) was making inquiries into whether its settlements unit breached the Corporations Act 2001.
ASIC chair Joe Longo told Capital Brief in January that the regulator was weighing its options in response to the outage. He also noted that there was a role for the competition regulator on the issue.
Last month, ASX CEO Helen Lofthouse said the breakdown was caused by a 10-year-old tech problem to do with the system's memory allocation.
The ASX’s CHESS system has been under fire as its replacement program has been hit by delays and a failed experiment with blockchain. The ASX abandoned the blockchain system in 2022 and wrote off an investment of $245 million as a result.
In August, the corporate regulator commenced legal action against the ASX over alleged misleading statements linked to its CHESS replacement program’s schedule.
The source: ASX announcement
