Compliance & Ethics

One of the biggest players in Australia’s futures market has been hit with a $2.55 million (AUD 3.88 million) penalty after failing to stop a wave of suspicious trading orders in the electricity and wheat futures market. The Market Disciplinary Panel (MDP) imposed the fine on SocGen, following an ASIC investigation that found the firm breached market integrity rules by permitting two clients to place 33 suspicious orders between May 2023 and February 2024.

Australia’s competition watchdog has secured a major victory after the Full Federal Court dismissed appeals by BlueScope Steel Ltd and its former General Manager, Jason Ellis, in a landmark cartel case. The decision leaves in place the highest penalty ever imposed for a breach of Australia’s competition laws i.e., a $57.5 million fine against BlueScope, alongside a $500,000 penalty against Ellis.

The European Commission is sounding the alarm on compliance challenges at the EU’s borders, warning that customs checks are struggling to keep pace with the flood of goods entering through e-commerce channels. A new report released on August 29 highlights how non-compliant products, from unsafe electronics to environmentally hazardous items, continue slipping through, creating risks for both consumers and businesses that play by the rules.

On 28 August, the Securities and Futures Commission (SFC) reprimanded Deutsche Bank and imposed a $23.8 million fine after a series of investigations revealed regulatory breaches stretching back more than a decade. The problems ranged from sloppy fee processes to disclosure lapses that cut at the heart of market integrity.

Australia’s communications regulator has penalized Exetel nearly $472,505 (AUD 694,860) after uncovering serious breaches that left customers exposed to sophisticated mobile number fraud schemes.

The Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) is taking a major step toward modernizing its oversight capabilities by deploying Nasdaq’s advanced market surveillance technology. The move upgrades the agency’s decades-old legacy system with cross-market monitoring and automated fraud detection tools designed to protect U.S. derivatives markets.

TerraCom Limited will pay a $7.5 million penalty after admitting to victimizing a whistleblower, marking the Australian Securities and Investments Commission’s (ASIC) first enforcement outcome under the whistleblower provisions of the Corporations Act.