ASX Faces More Regulatory Oversight After Last Year’s Outage
ASX Faces More Regulatory Oversight After Last Year’s Outage
(Bloomberg) -- Australia’s financial watchdog imposed additional license conditions on the nation’s leading stock exchange following an investigation into a market outage last year.
The Australian Securities & Investments Commission issued conditions on three licenses held by ASX Ltd. aimed at mitigating risks for upgrades, the regulator said in a statement Wednesday. It will also require an independent expert to assess whether ASX’s assurance program for the replacement of its aging settlements system is fit for purpose ahead of its planned launch in April 2023.
“The ASX outage was a very serious event, exacerbated by subsequent operational issues” ASIC Chair Joseph Longo said. “The imposition of these license conditions will confirm that remedial actions are implemented appropriately and efficiently to address these operational issues.”
Australia’s stock exchange opened for less than 30 minutes on Nov. 16 last year before a software issue forced it to close for the rest of the session. ASX was refreshing its trading system, which failed on the day despite over a year of testing.
ASX is working to fulfill the conditions, managing director and chief executive officer Dominic Stevens said in a statement. The company will also closely consider a report from ASIC on expectations on how to handle outages and engage with the regulator on its response, he added.
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