ASX failure delays Airtasker listing

As an ASX client, Mr Fung wants the sharemarket operator to be accountable for its failings.

“I think the main thing would be that the ASX has had some of these internal glitches ... and I think it’s important for the integrity of the Australian sharemarket that the ASX addresses these issues,” he said.

This latest blunder comes after a technical glitch in November forced an embarrassing shutdown in share trading just half an hour after the market opened. Investors were unable to trade because of the almost day-long outage caused by a botched move to a new trading software platform.

I would be keen to hear what the plan and the next steps are, and what’s going to change from the ASX’s point of view.

— Tim Fung, co-founder and CEO, Airtasker

The Reserve Bank of Australia grilled ASX management in December over the outage, which was just the latest in a string of ASX technology failures last year. That included the ASX’s new website not working, blocking access to company announcements and market data all of which reignited criticism of the ASX’s monopoly power.

The Financial Review reported that RBA governor Philip Lowe and the then acting chairwoman of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission, Karen Chester, were deeply troubled by the November 16 software glitch that took out the nation’s trading bourse for almost the entire day.

Separately, ASX has been criticised over the three-year delay in the Chess clearing and settlement replacement process.

The ASX is a critical piece of the nation’s financial infrastructure and each day facilitates 1.5 million transactions worth $5.9 billion. The ASX share price has collapsed 20 per cent since October, closing at $70.84 on Friday.

Mr Fung said he appreciated the ASX management, including Mr Stevens and executive general manager of listings Max Cunningham, being available, open and accepting blame for the delay.

“I must say one thing about both Max Cunningham and Dominic Stevens, they both gave me a call and made themselves absolutely available,” Mr Fung said. “And look, I must say that they certainly owned it, in terms of the issues that the ASX is facing at the moment.”

But he wants to hear from ASX management how it will improve.

“So I would be keen to hear what the plan and the next steps are, and what’s going to change from the ASX’s point of view.

“[I’d like to hear] how Dominic and Max plan to stay accountable to the responsibilities that they’ve got as the premier sharemarket in Australia. So I’d be keen to hear what those thoughts are.”

When The Australian Financial Review asked the ASX, a spokesperson said the “ASX has an accountability culture”.

“When mistakes or incidents occur, we conduct detailed and thorough reviews, and make sure we learn from the experience. In this specific case, we are reviewing what occurred very closely and will take appropriate steps to prevent it happening again,” the spokesperson said.

The ASX insisted the process of sending information about Airtasker’s float and the commencement date of trading needed to be “manual because of the nature and timing of the information being handled”.

The delay meant that the notices were not “disseminated to all relevant participants in the market, including brokers and information vendors, by the normal cut-off time on the business day before the scheduled listing”.

The ASX spokesperson said the market operator would have worked over the weekend to get the paperwork in order before Monday.

“[But] other vendors and participants would have already closed their processes to receive this information. We did not want to place an unacceptable risk on others in the market that rely on receiving information in a standard form by a certain time.”