The Longo game
As Joe Longo nears the end of his term as ASIC chair, he leaves a regulator that is more visible, litigious and image-conscious than the bruised one he inherited.
When Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) chair Joe Longo finishes his five-year term next year, the corporate regulator will be in very different shape to when he took over.
Back in 2021, the regulator’s reputation had been bruised by the banking royal commission, while Longo’s predecessor, James Shipton, had been investigated — and cleared of any wrongdoing — over expenses related to tax advice.
“There was a rebuild from it [the royal commission] and we have done that over the last four and five years,” Longo said at the ASIC Annual Forum in Melbourne on Wednesday.
The fact Longo has remade ASIC is undeniable.
Perhaps nowhere is that transformation more evident than at the ASIC Forum itself. A glance at a conference agenda during the Shipton era shows a line-up dominated by ASIC’s own people and a hodgepodge of overseas regulators.
