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Regulators to end ASX’s clearing monopoly

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30 March 2016
Arin Ray

In an interesting development Australian authorities are looking to end Australian Stock Exchange’s (ASX) monopoly on equity clearing and relaxing ownership restrictions that removes a potential hurdle to the ASX’s participation in overseas mergers. First, some background: Australia for long was like many other Asian markets with a single incumbent national exchange that is vertically integrated carrying out clearing and settlement activity. Departing from other Asian market practices, regulators introduced competition in the local exchange space by allowing a foreign player Chi-X, which entered the market in 2011 and quickly took significant share away from ASX. However, clearing of trades, including those conducted at Chi-X, was still conducted by ASX as it was the only clearing agency in the country.

Chi-X has been complaining for some time that this situation gives ASX unfair advantage and possibly creates conflicts of interest in that Chi-X has to depend on its competitor for clearing of its own trades. They have therefore called for introducing competition in the clearing space to mitigate the situation, bring down clearing fees, and accelerate innovation. ASX has cut clearing fees in the past, and again indicated that it would further cut fees by 10% from July, 2016. It has also argued that the Australian clearing market size is not big enough to make multiple clearing houses viable.

While the new changes indeed pave the way for newer players to enter, whether and when that materializes would be interesting to see. The Financial Times observes that these changes are “unlikely to result in the establishment of a rival clearing house in the near future”, but will “create a regulatory framework that gives competition authorities the power to arbitrate disputes about access by rivals to the ASX’s clearing and settlement services.” It may be noted that competition in the OTC clearing space was introduced a while back and LCH.Clearnet has already entered and captured significant market share. Merger with an overseas player, in spite of the rule changes, may not be easy. In Asia, the issue of national pride associated with national entities such as exchanges is a particularly important factor, and can make mergers and acquisition by foreign entities tricky, as was seen in Singapore Exchange’s failed bid to acquire ASX previously.

ASX on its part has been active in upgrading its technology and systems to stay abreast with international best practices and ahead of potential competition. In some cases it is taking the lead in the industry and looking to build innovative solutions that could transform trade processing operations. It would be interesting to observe how these initiatives shape up and what impact these changes have on the Australian and global exchange landscape.

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