A paper by ASIC Deputy Chair, Jillian Segal to the Fourth Roundtable on Capital Market Reform in Asia, Tokyo, 9–10 April 2002.
Thank you for inviting me to join you for the Fourth Roundtable on Capital Market Reform in Asia. I am delighted to be here.
I propose to share with you the Australian experience in relation to market demutualisation and cross border alliances. Although we have an exchange market that is small by world scale – with only 1.59% of the global capital market – we have experienced a number of interesting, and I believe, internationally relevant developments. I will cover some of these developments and the issues we have had to deal with as the market regulator. I will also touch on some of the lessons we have learned and indicate where work that for us began as 'demutualisation work' is now leading.
Most of my remarks will be about our experience with the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX). That is because it is Australia's premier capital market, and because ASX first raised the complex set of issues we have been working through. Nevertheless, the ASX experience has close parallels in our other major market, the Sydney Futures Exchange (SFE).
Let me begin, as they say, at the beginning, with a brief outline of the demutualisation process of ASX.