Inside the ASX competence crisis
The ASIC panel diagnoses underinvestment while ignoring leadership and execution failures.
The interim report of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission-appointed panel into the governance, capability and risk management of the ASX affirms H.L. Mencken's enduring warning that "for every complex problem there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."
The 'experts', with no exchange or market infrastructure expertise, responded with a bureaucrat's instinct of more. More spending. More systems. More regulatory oversight.
The lead observation in the interim report notes that "Until recently, ASX's operational and capital expenditure has been low, leading to under-investment in technology, systems, processes, and its own people over a number of years".
How the panel arrived at this conclusion is anyone's guess. No benchmark analysis is provided. No comparison with global peers. No productivity, delivery, or reliability metrics. Just assertion masquerading as diagnosis.
