Record ASIC fine won’t derail Openmarkets’ Nasdaq dream: CEO

afr.com:

A record-breaking fine has pushed Openmarkets to a $5.2 million loss, but the brokerage’s chief executive, Dan Jowett, says the Sydney-based company is still powering towards a Nasdaq listing by early next year.

The competition watchdog slapped the trading platform with a $4.5 million fine in June for failing to identify suspicious trading between 2018 and 2021, describing the company’s history of compliance as “poor”. To date, it is the largest fine ever imposed by the regulator’s markets disciplinary panel.

Mr Jowett said the result and the ASIC fine had not delayed Openmarkets plan to list on US-based Nasdaq stock exchange. Bloomberg

But the full toll of the fine stretched to $4.9 million, Openmarkets’ financial results revealed. According to the financial filings, handed to the Australian Securities and Investment Commission this week, the fine blew out because of legal fees related to the enforceable undertaking it entered with ASIC and the engagement of Ashurst Risk Advisory to review Openmarkets’ systems.

Mr Jowett told The Australian Financial Review that Ashurst had started its work only two weeks ago, but believed a final report would be delivered just before Christmas and was confident it would find “nothing systemic”.

“We didn’t have the necessary skills or experience in parts of the business,” said Mr Jowett, who joined Openmarkets early last year. “We made some strategic hires and let some people go… we got the right people into the business and started looking at the process and controls in 2021 and 2022.”

Openmarkets has since sold the problematic retail trading business at the centre of the fine. However, it employs the trader in question, Phillip Tauberman, who boasted of being a “sniper” and caught the