Macquarie Securities Australia (MSAL) has been fined AUD $35 million in the Australian Securities & Investments Commission’s (ASIC) first short-sale reporting case.
MSAL must also engage an independent expert to assess its systems and processes.
ASIC requested the fine be made by the New South Wales Supreme Court in December. MSAL has not contested the judgement.
READ MORE: Macquarie hit with AUD 35m ASIC fine
In his judgement, Justice Nixon concluded, “I am satisfied that the level of penalty takes into account that the contravening conduct was not deliberate, and did not involve senior management; that MSAL reported the Issues to ASIC and took steps to remediate them upon their being identified; and that MSAL is entitled to a discount on penalty by reason of its co-operation with ASIC, both during the investigation stage and throughout the course of this proceeding.”
Net interest and trading income at parent company Macquarie was AUD $4.5 billion in the six months to 30 September 2025, up 9.3% year-on-year.
Between 11 December 2009 and 14 February 2024, the commission found that at least 73 million short sales were misreported. It estimates that the real number of misreported short sales in this time is between 298 million and 1.5 billion.
“Regulators and investors rely heavily on short sale data to understand market conditions and identify emerging risks, particularly at times of market volatility and uncertainty,” noted ASIC chair Joe Longo.
“As one of the country’s largest financial services groups with significant reporting obligations, Macquarie should be setting the standard. What we saw in this case was simply not good enough.”
While failing to provide accurate regulatory data to the market operator, ASIC stated that MSAL “engaged in misleading or deceptive conduct in relation to the misreporting”.
Misreporting was the result of inadequate risk management systems, supervisory policies and procedures, and organisational and technical procedures, the commission added.
In its judgement, the Supreme Court of New South Wales identified nine issues including the use of “dummy fills” as actual covered short sales, the incorrect inclusion and exclusion of certain trade types, automatic adjustments in the firm’s IT portal, and incomplete reports being submitted.
There was also an overall failure to provide regulatory data to the market operator, resulting from incorrect data extraction.
