ASIC sues Macquarie for misleading conduct

The corporate regulator has targeted $82 billion financial giant Macquarie Group for the second time in a week, alleging it engaged in misleading conduct after failing to report as many as 1.5 billion short sales over 15 years.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has taken legal action in the NSW Supreme Court, alleging Macquarie failed to correctly report the volume of short sales by at least 73 million between December 2009 and February last year, affecting between 298 million and 1.5 billion short sales.

“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,” ASIC chairman Joe Longo, said.

This is ASIC’s first short-sale reporting case. It alleges the misleading conduct was due to multiple systems-related issues, many of which remained undetected for over a decade.

“(Macquarie’s) repeated systemic failure to detect and resolve these issues indicated serious neglect of its systems and disregard for operational controls and technological governance.”

Today’s announcement marks the fourth regulatory action ASIC has taken against Macquarie Group in just over 12 months.

Last week, ASIC slammed Macquarie for “multiple and significant” compliance failures, forcing the financial giant to appoint an independent expert to review its futures dealing business and over-the-counter derivatives trade reporting.

That move came after ASIC’s Markets Disciplinary Panel fined Macquarie a record $4.9 million for failing to prevent suspicious orders being placed on the electricity futures market in September 2024.