ASIC was dubbed a ‘watchdog with no teeth’. Has Joe Longo changed it?

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Australia’s corporate cop has long been fighting off claims that it’s a toothless tiger – a criticism that comes with the territory. But when Joe Longo became chair of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) in 2021, he faced more than the usual challenges that confront every ASIC boss.

The leadership of ASIC appeared to be in disarray, after Longo’s predecessor James Shipton had stepped down, despite being cleared of any wrongdoing in a formal review of public money being used to prepare his tax returns. The former deputy chair Daniel Crennan had also resigned after scrutiny of his almost $70,000 in housing expenses – an independent report also cleared Crennan of wrongdoing.

ASIC was still recovering from the caning it took at the 2018 banking royal commission, which found it was a timid regulator that was too close to banks.

At the same time, the government had signalled it wanted ASIC, which enforces corporate law and polices conduct in the financial services sector, to support the economy’s recovery from COVID-19.

So how has Longo, who steps down at the end of this month, steered ASIC through these tricky waters? Has Australia’s corporate regulator got its bite back under his watch?

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Longo, who will be replaced by deputy chair Sarah Court, acknowledged in a speech this week that ASIC had “challenges” when he began, saying it faced claims that it was a “watchdog with no teeth”.

In response, he tried to beef up its work investigating the financial sector, while also being clearer in telling the public about areas it was targeting.

A key change he and Court made soon after their appointments was to announce ASIC’s enforcement priorities annually – something Longo argued has been important for making it accountable to the public.

Helen Bird, a corporate governance expert and senior law lecturer at Swinburne University of Technology,........

© The Age