Annual review of NZX published

29/06/2018

The Financial Markets Authority (FMA) has published its annual review of NZX’s regulatory obligations as a licensed market operator during the 2017 calendar year.

NZX plays a vital role in helping to achieve fair, orderly and transparent financial markets in New Zealand to promote confident and informed participation by investors.

NZX generally complied with its obligations during the review period. However, a lack of market experience in its market surveillance function meant NZX did not meet its obligation to have adequate arrangements to monitor the conduct of participants on, or in relation to its markets.

To resolve this issue, NZX has committed to recruit additional resource into this function.

Last year’s annual review highlighted high turnover in the NZX surveillance team with vacancies filled with less experienced personnel. For this reason, the FMA focused its review on market surveillance.

The FMA did not find any other systemic issues in relation to NZX’s compliance with its market operator obligations. Apart from market surveillance, the FMA considers NZX has made improvements in other areas of regulation and enforcement.

Garth Stanish, FMA Director of Capital Markets, said, “We have discussed our concerns with NZX, who have put forward a proposal to address this issue. NZX demonstrated that it met its other obligations. We will continue to engage with NZX over the continued improvement of its surveillance function.”

A copy of the report can be found here

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