Australia's corporate regulator fines ASX, issues infringement notice

(Reuters) - Australia's corporate regulator said on Thursday that ASX Ltd has paid a A$1.1-million ($721,930) fine following a compliance investigation, marking the first such infringement notice issued to an exchange operator in the country.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) said it had reasonable grounds to believe ASX breached the rule requiring pre-trade transparency on 8,417 occasions between April 4, 2019 and Dec. 22, 2022.

The rules require bourse operator ASX to make available pre-trade information for orders on its market, unless an exception applies.

The infringement notice is for a configuration error within the system in the block trade minimum threshold for a subset of exchange traded funds and warrants, ASX said on Thursday.

The system configuration error, which impacted some orders on ASX's anonymous matching system Centre Point, was immediately identified, corrected and brought to ASIC's notice, according to the exchange operator.

"The availability of pre-trade information is fundamental to a fair and transparent market, and we take seriously any impairment to this," ASX CEO Helen Lofthouse said.

"This matter is separate to the ongoing ASIC investigation into oversight, statements and disclosures around the CHESS replacement project," ASX added.

Last year, the corporate regulator investigated possible breaches of disclosure rules at ASX over a troubled rebuild of its trading software.

($1 = 1.5237 Australian dollars)

(Reporting by Roushni Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by Shweta Agarwal and Shounak Dasgupta)