Mystery trader in Openmarkets’ record-setting ASIC fine revealed

afr.com:

Sydney-based trader, Philip Tauberman, is the mystery “client” at the centre of a record $4.5 million penalty handed down by ASIC’s markets disciplinary panel to Openmarkets on Thursday morning, Street Talk can reveal.

Philip Tauberman 

It is understood Tauberman was the trader who placed simultaneous bid and ask orders in the same security and at the same price on 2011 occasions, which ASIC labelled as “suspicious trading” in its statement on Thursday’s penalty.

He is also the client who paid $2000 to Openmarkets’ former acting head of trading Virginia Owczarek and was the receiver of “inappropriate and unprofessional communication” regarding SMART alerts. Lastly, his trading was the subject of Openmarkets’ earlier brush with the MDP from 2017.

Of note, he is also currently employed by Openmarkets – but more on that later.

To be clear, the corporate regulator did not charge Tauberman with any wrongdoing. Its record MDP fine’s subject is Openmarkets on compliance failures, while Owczarek has been banned from providing any financial services for three years.

He declined a request for comment.

Sources said Tauberman’s trading style – buying and selling the same security at a time – harked back to his time as a trader at now defunct stockbroker BBY’s Jaguard Funds business, which essentially acted as a liquidity provider to buyers and sellers.

He became an Openmarkets client about eight years ago, and mostly dabbled in liquid blue-chip names. There was massive leverage, but his book would be net-neutral at end of the day, sources said.

He had also supplied Openmarkets’ application programming interface (API) via his company Cannon Trading. When Openmarkets acquired Cannon Trading in late 2021 after its failed float,