The corporate regulator announced on its website that Merrill Lynch Australia received the penalty for failing to have in place an appropriate automated price filter in relation to automated order processing for a client account.
ASIC said this interfered with the “efficiency and integrity of the ASX market”.
Merrill Lynch Equities Australia also failed to prevent the entry into the ASX trading platform of an erroneous order which resulted in a market for Class A non-voting common stock in News Corporation Inc. not being both fair and orderly.
ASIC said the company had contravened Rules 5.6.1 and 5.9.1 of the ASIC Market Integrity Rules and had thereby also contravened subsection 798H(1) of the Corporations Act 2001 which requires compliance with the market integrity rules.
Merrill Lynch Australia received a penalty of $56,000 for contravening rule 5.6.1 and a $40,000 penalty for the other rule it contravened.
