Macquarie Securities has agreed to a $35 million penalty after its cash equities brokerage arm admitted to misreporting millions of short sales over more than a decade.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission and Macquarie (ASX:MQG) will jointly ask the NSW Supreme Court to approve the penalty.
The misconduct spans at least 73 million incorrectly reported short sales between December 2009 and February 2024, with total misreported transactions estimated between 298 million and 1.5 billion due to persistent system failures.
Macquarie also acknowledged lapses in supervisory policies, organisational resources, risk management, and regulatory reporting, including errors on more than 633,000 trades reported to the market operator between November 2022 and March 2023.
ASIC chair Joe Longo stressed the importance of accurate reporting, saying, "Accurate and reliable data underpins confidence in our financial markets. Without it, market transparency is undermined, and market participants cannot make informed decisions."