Bourse blues
A week dominated by activity on — and scandals surrounding — the ASX ended fittingly with results from the national stock exchange operator itself.
Usually at this time of year, corporate reporting season on the ASX dominates everything else in Australian business. But in 2024, the annual ritual has been somewhat overshadowed by scandals enveloping the ASX itself.
While results from a number of blue chip names from Matt Comyn’s CBA to Vicki Brady’s Telstra and Frank Calabria’s Origin Energy were certainly noteworthy this week, the bigger story was arguably the seismic move by the corporate regulator ASIC to sue the exchange owner ASX Ltd for knowingly misleading the market. The case relates to problems with a bungled upgrade to the ASX’s backend technology platform CHESS, and, as we noted, the optics of it are terrible for the exchange.
We’ve written a lot at Capital Brief this year about the tightly held perceptions among some local investors and also international observers that the local bourse is a wild west, prone to leaks and questionable activity. Just 48 hours before ASIC announced its court action we published a story on concerns among market integrity experts that the ASX is not as clean as many of its developed world peers, including exchanges in the US, with up to 10% of trades on the bourse tainted by inside information.
ASIC’s legal action this week will only add to those perceptions, as will Capital Brief’s revelation that the technology woes were so well known that even the RBA’s Michelle Bullock was told about them in 2021.
