International Law

The Treasurer, Wayne Swan MP and the Minister for Financial Services, Superannuation and Corporate Law, Chris Bowen MP, have announced changes to the supervision of Australia's financial markets.

The Government has decided to provide for the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) to perform supervision of real-time trading on all of Australia's domestic licensed markets. This change will mean that ASIC will now be responsible for both supervision and enforcement of the laws against misconduct on Australia's financial markets.

The changes will mean that ASIC will become responsible for supervising trading activities by broker participants which take place on a licensed financial market, while individual markets ? such as the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) - will retain responsibility for supervising the entities listed on them.

There is no proposal for ASIC to take over supervision of listed entities.

It is intended that legislation will be introduced into Parliament next year to give effect to this change, with ASIC to begin performing these functions in the third quarter of 2010.