NEWS

What are the major differences between retail and wholesale investors? Retail investors must be provided with a Financial Services Guide (FSG), Statement of Advice (SOA) and where appropriate, a regulated offer document such as a Product Disclosure Statement (PDS) Retail investors have access to external dispute resolution schemes, while wholesale investors generally do not Retail…

What is it? The Government is seeking to introduce the Treasury Laws Amendment (Design and Distribution Obligations and Product Intervention Power) Bill 2018 (Cth) (“Bill”) into law. The new regime’s purpose is to promote the provision of suitable financial products to consumers by requiring issuers and distributers to appropriately market and distribute financial products aimed…

What is a CCIV? The Corporate Collective Investment Vehicle (CCIV) will be a passive collective investment vehicle that is a public company and is structured as an umbrella fund incorporating one or more sub-funds. These sub-funds are not required to be separate legal entities, thereby allowing the offer of multiple products and investment strategies within…

Earlier today ASIC released Report 583 – Review of exchange traded products (ETPs), which sets out the findings and recommendations of ASIC’s comprehensive review of ETPs in Australia. This report will be of interest to issuers and market operators of ETPs, along with retail investors. Overall, the report found that the market is performing well,…

ASIC has released its independent report (the Report) in respect to RG 97 which it commissioned on 1 November 2017 in response to strong feedback from industry regarding challenges associated with the implementation of RG 97 and ASIC Class Order CO 14/1252. The author of the report, Mr Darren McShane engaged more than 120 industry…

The Government today released the second tranche of the Treasury Laws Amendment (Corporate Collective Investment Vehicle) Bill 2018 (CCIV Bill) for public consultation. The measure complements the Asia Region Funds Passport initiative which we previously reported on, and which passed the Parliament on 28 June 2018. We also previously reported on the release of tranche…

The Financial Stability Board (FSB) published a report this week (16 July 2018), addressing its, and related standard setting bodies work on crypto-assets, which will be delivered to the G20 finance ministers and central bank governors for their meeting in Buenos Aires on 21-22 July. The potential ramifications of the report extend even further given the…

The long awaited passage of the Corporations Amendment (Asia Region Funds Passport) Bill, which gives effect to the Passport’s Memorandum of Cooperation signed in 2016 by Australia, Japan, Korea, New Zealand and Thailand, now has an accompanying set of regulations and related explanatory material open for consultation from today. Legislation to establish the Asia Region…

Further to our news release earlier in March this year drawing clients’ attention to the Government’s release of a package of policy measures intended to address taxation bias towards foreign investors under certain stapled structures, Treasury has today released the next instalment of the package outlining the proposed conditions stapled entities must comply with to…

The importance of foreign investment in Australia cannot be overstated given it accounts for about 4% of GDP. It is arguably not surprising given Australia is the only country in the developed world to have achieved 27 years of uninterrupted economic growth. In addition to the financial contribution to our standard of living, it brings…