The new head of the corporate regulator, a lawyer at Harvard who worked at the Hong Kong securities regulator and Goldman Sachs, has been given a mandate by the government to shake-up the regulator and make significant cultural change at the Australian Securities and Investments Commission.

James Shipton, the son of former Victorian Liberal MP Roger Shipton, was appointed yesterday to replace Greg Medcraft and has vowed to continue the "important work" of stamping out bad culture in the financial sector.