The MDP believes that Macquarie Securities (Australia) Limited breached the market integrity rules around the provision of regulatory data to stock exchanges ASX and Chi-X.
Over a four-year period between July 2014 and 2018, Macquarie transmitted approximately 42 million orders to the ASX and Chi-X that included incorrect regulatory data or omitted required regulatory data, according to a statement released by ASIC.
Once Macquarie became aware of the scale of the issues, which it reported to ASIC, it undertook a comprehensive review to identify the causes and promptly implemented remedial measures.
The MDP found that while Macquarie intended to comply with the market rules, there were weaknesses in the configuration and integration of Macquarie’s systems, which is its process of onboarding new clients and its control framework, according to ASIC.
The MDP considers Macquarie’s conduct to be negligent, having a poor design, and is concerned with the length of time the problem persisted without detection from the financial institution.
The regulatory data that was incorrect or mission was information around:
- capacity: a notation to identify whether Macquarie was acting as principal or agent
- origin: a notation to identify the person on whose instructions Macquarie was acting
- intermediary: the AFSL number of an intermediary using Macquarie’s automated order processing system
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