Macquarie acknowledges 60 short-selling ‘suspects’
Around 60 current and former Macquarie Group staff including the company’s chief executive have been acknowledged as having been designated as suspects in a German investigation into short-selling activities almost a decade ago.
Macquarie Group Limited (MGL) has issued a formal assurance that it has appropriately provisioned for continuing action by German authorities relating to what it describes as an “historical German lending transaction”.
The big financial services group said the provisioning related to the transaction in 2011 and involved an industry-wide investigation relating to dividend trading.
“As part of their industry-wide investigation, the authorities have recently designated as suspects approximately 60 current and former Macquarie staff in relation to historical short selling-related activities, most of whom are no longer at Macquarie and some of whom are already named in relation to the 2011 lending matter, including the MGL CEO,” the company told the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX).
“No information of detail or particularity has been provided regarding the naming of these people other than that it relates to short-selling related activities.”
“The total amount at issue is not considered to be material and MGL has provided for the matter. We note that no current staff members have been interviewed to date,” the ASX statement said.
Recommended for you
The exit of co-CIOs Andrew Clifford and Clay Smolinski from Platinum has highlighted key person risk, with Morningstar raising its outflow forecast to 33 per cent of FUM per annum in response.
Despite having entered into a scheme of arrangement with Bell Financial Group last week, Selfwealth has opted to now progress with a bid from rival Svava instead.
Platinum Asset Management has announced co-chief investment officers Andrew Clifford and Clay Smolinski are to step down from their roles.
ASIC has warned Australian retail investors there “will be product failures” in the private credit space as the assets are untested for a large-scale stress event, but has stopped short of discouraging retail participation.
