ASIC has banned Mark Alexander Landau of Balmain, New South Wales (formerly of Toorak Gardens, South Australia) and Marcus Roderick Campbell of South Brighton, South Australia from providing financial services for 10 years.

The decisions were made by ASIC’s new Financial Services and Credit Panel, which found that Mr Landau and Mr Campbell had engaged in conduct that was deliberate and dishonest and involved continued, knowing and wilful contraventions of the law.

Mr Landau was employed as an authorised representative and Senior Wealth Adviser in the Adelaide office of Macquarie Equities Limited (Macquarie) between November 2007 and June 2017.

Mr Campbell was employed as an authorised representative and Executive Investment Adviser in the Adelaide office of Macquarie between November 2007 and June 2017.

The Panel found that between January 2014 and January 2017 Mr Landau, and between August 2015 and March 2017 Mr Campbell: 

• falsified the content of client email exchanges to mislead or deceive Macquarie’s compliance team into believing that general advice or execution only instructions had been given by them, and not personal advice;
• arranged for the false emails to be saved into Macquarie’s customer relationship management system, Xplan; and
• created false order management system (IOS) transaction records to reflect the emails.

On 14 August 2018, Mr Landau and Mr Campbell filed applications in the Administrative Appeals Tribunal (AAT) for a review of the banning orders made by the Panel. Mr Landau and Mr Campbell also applied for a stay of the banning orders pending the determination of the review applications in the AAT.

On 10 September 2018, the applications for a stay of the banning orders were subsequently dismissed by the AAT. The hearing for the substantive appeals has been listed to commence on 26 November 2018.

The bannings will appear on ASIC’s Banned and Disqualified Persons Register and be reflected on ASIC’s Financial Advisers Register.

ASIC’s MoneySmart website has useful information for clients of advisers to help them understand what to do if their adviser has been banned.

Background

Personal advice is financial product advice that is given or directed to a person (including by electronic means) in circumstances where the provider of the advice has considered one or more of the person's objectives, financial situation and needs, or a reasonable person might expect the provider to have considered one of more of those matters.

General advice is financial product advice that is not personal advice.

A person giving personal advice needs to be authorised to do so. Certain obligations flow from giving personal advice to certain classes of client.

Xplan is a customer relationship management system which holds all personal and relevant financial information about clients.

IOS (IRESS Order System) is an order management system that allows brokers to enter orders to the market.

ASIC’s Wealth Management Project

The bannings of Mr Landau and Mr Campbell are part of ASIC's Wealth Management Project. The Wealth Management Project was established in October 2014 to lift the standards of major financial advice providers. The Wealth Management Project focuses on the conduct of the largest financial advice firms (NAB, Westpac, CBA, ANZ, Macquarie and AMP).

ASIC's work in the Wealth Management Project covers a number of areas including:

• working with the largest financial advice firms to address the      identification and remediation of non-compliant advice; and　
• seeking regulatory outcomes, where appropriate, against licensees and advisers.

As part of its Wealth Management Project, ASIC has banned 49 advisers and one director from the financial services industry. Two bannings are the subject of appeals, with one further banning stayed pending the outcome of an appeal.

The Financial Services and Credit Panel

The Financial Services and Credit Panel (FSCP) is a pool of industry participants that ASIC draws upon when forming individual sitting panels (sitting panels). Each sitting panel comprises two members from the FSCP and an ASIC staff member. Sitting panels operate alongside our existing administrative decision-making processes for retail financial services and credit activities by providing an element of peer review.

Sitting panels decide whether we will make banning orders against individuals for misconduct in the course of providing retail financial services and/or engaging in credit activities. A banning matter may be referred to an individual sitting panel where we consider it appropriate for peer review because of its significance, complexity or novelty (refer: 17-388MR).

Editor's note 1:

This media release was edited on 18 September 2018 to clarify the number of advisers banned as part of the Wealth Management Project.

Editor's note 2:

On 8 February 2019, the AAT reduced the banning period for Mr Landau and Mr Campbell from 10 years to 18 months (refer: 19-025MR).