ASIC reluctant to release documents about NAB press release

Peter Nicholson margin call cartoon for 21-04-2015 Version: (Original) COPYRIGHT: The Australian's artists each have different copyright agreements in place regarding re-use of their work in other publications. Please seek advice from the artists themselves or the Managing Editor of The Australian regarding re-use.

This afternoon bosses of most of the nation’s big banks are to be grilled about their various financial planning disasters by the Senate economics reference committee, headed by Labor’s Sam Dastyari.

No doubt their relationships with Greg Medcraft’s mob at ASIC, who have been accused of not keeping the financial planning industry under control, will be scrutinised.

Better to ask the banks than ASIC, if Margin Call’s experience is any guide.

ASIC wants a whopping $4380 from Margin Call in order to press on with a freedom of information request covering some of its dealings with banks over their various financial planning scandals.

In February it emerged that ASIC allowed NAB to suggest changes to a press release the regulator was sending out dealing with a major stuff-up in the bank’s Navigator platform.

Keen to see whether this cosy arrangement was a one-off or part of a pattern, Margin Call asked ASIC to hand over documents relating to the development of the announcement and similar ones about Macquarie, the CBA, AMP and Westpac.

ASIC lawyer Paula O’Regan last week said Margin Call would have to stump up a quarter of the dosh — more than $1000 — before she’d decide whether or not to release any or all of some 600 pages of documents.

Some 23 ASIC officers have somehow spent a total of 228 hours — that’s six working weeks — searching their email inboxes for the relevant items.

Executive scrutiny

It’s an all-CEO line-up in Canberra at today’s Senate inquisition: Macquarie is sending Nicholas Moore, NAB Andrew Thorburn, CBA Ian Narev. With one notable absence: ANZ’s Mike Smith.

Deputy and Senate inquiry veteran Graham Hodges is there instead. (Westpac will appear at a later date.) So where’s Smithy? Slipped off to Singapore? Hanging out in Hong Kong? Living it up in Labuan? Apparently not: on last sighting, he’s working hard in sunless Melbourne.

The focus is likely to be on the victims of the various banks’ financial planning arms — more than 500,000 accounts have been put in doubt so far, just between CBA and Macquarie.

Let’s hope Moore deals with the senators better than Macquarie does with the media: a recent Press Council ruling noted its “apparent reluctance to respond to specific questions” and “generally uncooperative response” to queries.

Kiwi’s wings clipped

ASIC appears close to having a chat with Kiwi Mark Bryers, aka Mark Ryan, whose ambitions to set up an accounting and financial advice empire in Australia may fall foul of the inconvenient fact that he’s still an undischarged bankrupt after more than $NZ200 million ($197m) of awkwardness across the ditch. As Margin Call reported last week, Bryers/Ryan recently signed off the minutes of a meeting of Sydney-based Talos Advisory Group as the chairman, and unkind people are saying he controls the business, even though accountant Stephen Lacy, who won’t comment, is registered as the sole shareholder and director.

Asked for comment, ASIC initially and deflatingly said that when people were applying to provide financial services “where a person is not included in the application as a responsible manager, providing the financial services, such as an employee or director, then ASIC would not receive further information from the applicant’’.

However, things became clearer when ASIC followed up by noting that “a New Zealand Court order banning a person from managing a company will also ban them in Australia. ASIC will assess any concerns raised with us that a banned person is managing a company in Australia.’’ Watch this space.

Food for thought

Just because he was an appointee of the former Rudd government clearly hasn’t stopped our former consul-general in New York having friends in high places in Coalition circles. Phil Scanlan, who is also a former chief executive of Coca-Cola Amatil, was spotted leaving discreet Melbourne eatery Il Solito Posto yesterday with Future Fund chairman Peter Costello.

Driving us crazy

The only forestry company in Australia that hasn’t yet collapsed, sandalwood outfit TFS Corporation, loves to spruik its green credentials — so why has it hired Daniel Ricciardo, the star of petrol-guzzling Formula One, as a “global ambassador”? To “accelerate our sales drive”, of course, according to chief executive Frank Wilson. Groan.