Saxby Bridge loses dealer licence
Saxby Bridge Financial Planninghas had its securities dealer licence stripped and one of its investment advisers banned for five years following the latest crackdown on financial services industry foul play by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).
Earlier today ASIC announced that it has revoked the securities dealer licences of both Saxby Bridge and its related companyABS Securities(ABS). The regulator has also banned Jeffrey Joseph Braysich from acting as an investment dealer or an adviser for a period of five years. Up until today, Braysich was a principal of the Saxby Bridge group and a director of both Saxby Bridge and ABS.
It is understood that ASIC’s removal of both securities licenses and Braysich from his dealer and adviser duties follows an investigation by the watchdog which discovered that both companies and their shared director, Braysich, were involved in the marketing of tax schemes to their clients in a manner that created serious concern.
ASIC found that Braysich had a serious conflict of interest with the clients of both companies as he stood to receive, through other groups he ran, a share of the profits generated by some of the tax schemes, including the Preston Vale Vineyard Project and the No Regrets I Project.
ASIC also found Saxby Bridge and ABS had a remuneration structure that encouraged individual advisers to recommend tax schemes to their clients over alternative and less risky investments such as managed funds.
In many of the cases, ASIC found that the individual investment needs of clients was inadequately considered, and not appropriately served by investments in the schemes recommended by Saxby Bridge and ABS. Individual advisers also failed to follow Saxby Bridge’s internal guidelines for the sale of tax-effective schemes, and the company’s compliance staff did not effectively monitor this failure.
A number of the tax schemes, such as the Budplan products and the Tentas Project have collapsed without producing any significant returns for individual investors. The Australian Tax Office (ATO) has also disallowed deductions claimed by Saxby Bridge and ABS clients and required them to pay tax on those deductions.
Since January this year ASIC has banned 25 people from acting as representatives or advisers for various periods.
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