Acclime Corporate Snapshot – June 2025.
Acclime Corporate Snapshot provides you with an overview of current corporate governance matters, including regulatory changes, trends, and other important issues.
To discuss how these may affect you, please contact us on 03 8689 9997.
ASIC turns its sights on ASX
ASIC has launched an inquiry under the Corporations Act into Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) group, looking into its governance, capability and risk management frameworks and practices.
ASX is central to Australia’s financial markets: ASIC and the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) have moved to address longstanding concerns over its ability to maintain critical market infrastructure. In a media release, ASIC have described the move as a response to “repeated and serious failures at ASX.” ASIC and the RBA had already flagged their concerns in a March 2025 joint letter to the ASX, after the CHESS batch settlement failure incident that occurred on 20 December last year.
An expert panel, appointed by ASIC, will publish recommendations to guide further regulatory steps. ASIC’s investigation into the December 2024 CHESS batch settlement failure will now be wrapped up in this broader inquiry.
The composition of the expert panel will be announced in the coming weeks.
And where is the ACCC looking in the coming year?
The ACCC has announced its compliance and enforcement priorities for 2025-26, and they include scrutiny of the supermarket and retail, aviation and digital sectors. Within those sectors, there’s renewed focus on cost of living, digital economy and greenwashing. And outside them, a significant priority is promoting competition and pursuing misleading claims in essential services – especially electricity, telecoms and gas.
In the health sphere, the ACCC wants to improve Consumer Law compliance among NDIS providers, and look into children’s product safety.
As this sample suggests, the aims are diverse and far-reaching.
The priorities address, by ACCC Chair Gina Cass-Gottlieb, is several months in the past now, but it’s worth revisiting these comments as the financial year winds down and the new one is ushered in.
APRA closing in on banks, insurers and super funds
Feedback’s just closed on an APRA (Australian Prudential Regulation Authority) discussion paper looking into the resilience of the entities it regulates. The paper was prompted by the disturbing finding that 32% of those entities have risk profiles falling outside APRA’s desired range.
APRA is proposing eight measures to increase the skills base of directors, and thereby to reduce the potential for conflicts in decision-making by directors. Although the proposals are described as “modest” by Allens lawyers in this Insight piece, and are premised on the notion that ‘better’ directors will deliver better governance, they are nonetheless a sterner standard, and possibly a harbinger of harsher measures to come.
Enacting the lessons of an inquiry or royal commission
At a recent symposium, senior counsel Dominique Hogan-Doran, a veteran of over 20 royal commissions and public inquiries, talked about the relationship between a constructive response to an inquiry by leaders and boards, and “downstream consequences.”
Damage control, concealment and corporate embarrassment are the seeds of lasting reputational harm, according to Ms Hogan-Doran. In contrast, “openness and engagement will be positively acknowledged by inquirers, and begin the rebuilding of your reputation.”
Drawing upon inquiries into the Robodebt scheme, the banking industry and the NSW RSL, Ms Hogan-Doran reminds us of a reality that seems self-evident but needs reinforcing: that reputational crises are usually driven by fundamental problems of governance and culture.
You can read an extract from Ms Hogan-Doran’s speech here.
Latest data reveals gender pay gap outcomes still stagnant
In March, the federal government’s Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) published its ‘Employer Gender Pay Gaps Report’ on 2023-24 gender pay gap data across nearly 8,000 private sector employers and 1,700 corporate groups.
Reduced to its most simple terms, the report says that for every $1 a man earns, women earn 78 cents on average, adding up to a yearly difference of $28,425.
The WGEA data offers a valuable comparison tool for directors. By looking at the causes of an organisation’s gender pay gap, directors can create a voluntary ‘employer statement’ giving context to the organisation’s results and explaining the key causes and plans for action to address disparities.
Sources of information: Gilbert+Tobin, Allens, Australian Securities Exchange Ltd (ASX), Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).
Disclaimer: Acclime Corporate Snapshot is only intended to provide a general overview on matters of interest. It is not intended to be comprehensive and is not legal advice. Acclime Australia attempts to ensure that content is current but we do not guarantee its currency. You should seek legal and/or professional advice before acting or relying on any content.
