ASIC chair Longo outs Macquarie | Australian Markets

The Macquarie Group board needs to be involved that the normally measured chair of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, Joe Longo, has pointedly referenced the company as a serial miscreant.

At the identical time as asserting that ASIC has initiated courtroom motion in opposition to Macquarie Securities (Australia) over alleging “engaging in misleading conduct by misreporting millions of short sales” over 14 years, Longo additionally identified that it represented the regulator’s fourth regulatory motion in opposition to Macquarie Group in simply over 12 months.

“Our actions reflect the ongoing and deep concerns we have with Macquarie Group and its weak remediation of long-standing issues, which led us to impose additional conditions on Macquarie Bank’s Australian Financial Services licence only last week,” Longo stated.

To perceive the importance of Longo’s feedback it must be understood that ASIC could have spent many months coping with a number of areas of Macquarie Group interrogating the company’s systems and practices.

For Longo then to have made such a damning assertion in regards to the company indicators that ASIC’s earlier regulatory interactions with Macquarie have failed to realize the specified outcomes and that, as a end result, ASIC has grow to be exasperated.

This a lot was indicted by ASIC’s reference to occasions relationship back to 2025.

“Market Participants must ensure that their systems, controls and governance arrangements are robust and fit for purpose to comply with their regulatory obligations,” ASIC’s assertion stated.

“In 2020, MSAL undertook a review of its short sale reporting process following weaknesses identified in 2015 and 2019. It is clear this review failed to identify and resolve the issues in these proceedings.”

ASIC took the difficulty in yesterday’s announcement to stipulate its different actions “in opposition to Macquarie Group entities:

• On 7 May 2025, ASIC imposed extra AFS licence circumstances on Macquarie Bank Limited following more than 10 years of compliance failures.
• In September 2024, ASIC’s Markets Disciplinary Panel (MDP) fined Macquarie Bank Limited a file $4.995 million for failing to forestall suspicious orders being positioned on the electrical energy futures market.
• In April 2024, the Federal Court ordered Macquarie Bank Limited to pay a penalty of $10 million for failing to have efficient controls to forestall and detect unauthorised price transactions carried out by third events, resembling financial advisers, on buyer money management accounts utilizing Macquarie’s bulk transacting facility.
• In June 2019, ASIC’s MDP fined MSAL $300,000 for failing to accurately report Regulatory Data for roughly 42 million orders or trade studies to the related market operators.

It additionally famous that ASIC’s Markets Disciplinary Panel has issued a complete of seven infringement notices to Macquarie Group entities for breaches of the Market Integrity Rules, amounting to $6.33 million in fines.