Financial Services Misconduct and the Corporations Act 2001

This working paper is the second published output of an eighteen-month (December 2014 – June 2016) research project conducted by staff at the Melbourne Law School that examines enforcement and penalties regimes under legislation administered by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC). The paper follows Working Paper 1's scoping of penalties under ASIC administered legislation by discussing enforcement under the Corporations Act through the lens of a study of court-based enforcement by ASIC of financial services misconduct. The paper is in three parts. Part I considers current debates about penalties regimes available to ASIC. Part II discusses the provisions and penalties presently operating under the Corporations Act for financial services misconduct. Part III examines the actual penalties handed down for corporate wrongdoing for financial services misconduct in Australian Courts by way of a small case study of ASIC court based enforcement cases from 2011-2013. Part IV concludes