More AXE grinding August 24, 2009
Posted by James Webster in : finance , trackbackIt appears that there finally will be some movement in the halting efforts to introduce greater competition to Australian capital markets. The federal government has decided to move market & trading supervision responsibilities to ASIC in addition to its existing role as the cop enforcing the Corporations Act, and away from the ASX’s Market Supervision subsidiary. Clearly it would be untenable for ASX to have any function performing a regulatory role in an environment with multiple trading venues; the ASX would be regulating its competitors regardless of how “at arm’s length” the relationship with ASX Market Supervision is.
As an IT practitoner in financial markets that is moving from London back to Australia this is good news for me personally, but I do believe that greater competition (and therefore lower transaction costs) will attract significantly higher investment inflows. However the government will have to be prepared to fund ASIC adequately. I wonder if AXE/Chi-X etc can be convinced to start a new financial hub in Brisbane?!
Further coverage at Finextra and the Sydney Morning Herald.
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