Australia’s
corporate regulator wants to keep four sets of relief covering exchange-traded
derivatives and securities, all of them due to expire later this year.
ASIC said
Monday it would remake the instruments for another five years with only minor
amendments, leaving their effect unchanged.
What the Four Rules
Actually Do
All four
lapse under the Legislation Act 2003, which automatically retires legislative
instruments after a decade unless ASIC acts to preserve them. Three date back
to 2016 and the fourth to 2021.
The renewal
lands as the regulator works through a backlog of expiring rules and a broader
cleanup, having scrapped more than 9,000 pages of
regulatory content last year in a push it said was meant to cut compliance costs.
The
instruments each sit in a different corner of market infrastructure. One
removes duplicate disclosure for certain exchange-traded derivatives treated as
issued by both an intermediary and a market participant, so that only the
market participant has to provide a product disclosure statement.
A second recognizes
securities settled through New Zealand’s former FASTER system, now the NZCDC
Legal Title Transfer system, under Australian law. A third allows
foreign-company shares and debentures quoted on the ASX to transfer with
statutory warranties and indemnities.
The fourth,
introduced in 2021, gives securities lenders relief from the substantial holding
disclosure rules in Chapter 6C of the Corporations Act. That overlaps with the
same disclosure forms ASIC flagged for simplification during last year’s
red-tape review.
A Familiar Path for
Expiring Relief
Rolling
relief forward rather than rewriting it is a route ASIC has taken before. In
2022 the regulator extended financial requirements for
retail OTC derivatives providers for five years on much the same basis, citing the need for industry
certainty while any changes to primary law worked through.
ASIC said
it had determined the four instruments are operating effectively and remain a
useful part of the framework.
The agency
is taking feedback on the proposal, set out in a consultation paper referenced
as CS 56, until 5pm AEST on July 20. The substance of the instruments will not
change if they are remade, the regulator said.
This article was written by Damian Chmiel at www.financemagnates.com.
SOURCE LINK : ASIC Hits Renew on Four Aging Market Rules
