OpenMarkets Australia pays infringement penalty
Online stockbroker OpenMarkets Australia breached market integrity rules in relation to both the ASX Market and Chi-X Australia Market throughout 2015 and 2016 and will pay a $200,000 infringement penalty, according to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).
ASIC said the breaches related to filters on the use of automated order processing (AOP) systems had rendered OpenMarkets’ actions as non-compliant with its Australian financial services licence (AFSL).
The Markets Disciplinary Panel (MDP) found that OpenMarkets did not have appropriate filters for:
- The prevention of trades that involved no change of beneficial ownership;
- To reject the placement of sell orders which exceeded maximum order value limits;
- To reject the placement of sell orders that were prohibited short sales; and
- The identification of orders that were priced far away from the prevailing price in other markets.
The penalty to OpenMarkets is $360,000 cheaper than it would have been prior to the firm’s agreement to the impositions of conditions on their AFSL last December.
AUTHOR
Hope William-Smith
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