The 1 September 2020 report of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services on the 2018–2019 annual report of ASIC has pointed out that ASIC failed to fulfil its annual reporting responsibilities sections 136(1)(ca) and 136(1)(cb) of the ASIC Act.
These sections require ASIC to explain what activities it has undertaken in relation to Corporations Act Ch 5 and Schedule 2 – the insolvency parts – for example by way of issuing statutory directions to liquidators, exchanging confidential conduct information, or demanding liquidators’ records.
The committee said it “expects ASIC will meet both those requirements in future annual reports.”
As to which, ASIC’s annual report, and others’, are due to be presented to parliament in October 2020.
As to the Committee’s comments, I had already drawn these deficiencies to attention last year in What didn’t happen? at this link, noting that there did not seem to be any directions to liquidators issued, as there had been in the previous year, nor any s 100-5 industry notices from ARITA, CAANZ or others, nor any confidential information conveyed by or to ARITA or CAANZ.
The Australian system is of course to require this information to be provided in the annual report of ASIC as the corporate insolvency regulator, but not in the annual report of AFSA, the personal insolvency regulator. ARITA and CAANZ, as statutory industry bodies, representing both personal and corporate insolvency practitioners, relevantly report little beyond their own regulatory processes.
2 Responses
It’s been pointed out to me that you claim that ARITA does not report on its referrals to regulators.
This is false.
ARITA reports on our IPS 40-100 referrals to ASIC in our annual report and has always done so.
Corrected, thank you – 2 reports.