A presentation by ASIC Commissioner, Belinda Gibson, to the ISFA Innovate 08 Conference, 7 August 2008, Brisbane.
Opening
Thankyou for that welcome.
My first draft of this speech was a bit of an economics lecture – I decided that was a big call after lunch, to sophisticated investment advisers such as yourselves.
So I decided to take a more personal view of the topic – my lessons from sub-prime and market turmoil – if you like my reflections on ASIC's role and its response to market turmoil, both to date and looking forward over the next 6 months.
I joined ASIC as a commissioner on 5 November 2007 – which was about the peak of stock market prices, or the start of the decline. My friends tell me they cannot discern any causative association. For those of you who are superstitious, I have a 3 year term.
My initial role was to head the capital markets taskforce. That gave me responsibility to the Commission for all aspects of our capital markets – supervision of the ASX and other licensed markets, and oversight of market trading via our markets surveillance and enforcement teams. I have also been closely involved in our review of some of the major listed company collapses. I have learned a great deal about being a regulator in difficult times, very quickly.