Australian regulator extends suspension of AFS license of BBY Ltd
ASIC has extended the suspension of BBY’s licence until June 30, 2021.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) today announces that it has extended the suspension of the Australian financial services (AFS) licence held by BBY Limited (BBY) until June 30, 2021.
BBY Ltd, the main operating entity of the BBY group, was a financial services licensee headquartered in Sydney with offices in Adelaide, Auckland, Brisbane, Gold Coast, London, Melbourne, New York, Perth and Wellington. BBY was also a market participant of ASX, Chi-X and SSX (formerly APX), and a clearing and settlement participant of the ASX.
The BBY group consisted of 10 entities and included two other financial services licensees: BBY Advisory Services Pty Ltd and SmarTrader Limited. BBY was also authorised under its licence to issue and make a market in derivatives and FX.
On May 28, 2015, ASIC suspended the AFS licence held by BBY for a period of three years.
This followed the appointment of Stephen Vaughan and Ian Hall as joint administrators to BBY on 17 May 2015. Steven Parbery and Brett Lord were appointed receivers and managers of BBY on 18 May 2015. ASIC notes that from 29 October 2019 Rahul Goyal and Scott Langdon of KordaMentha are the appointed receivers and managers of BBY.
On 27 May 2018, ASIC decided to extend the suspension for a further 12 months until 28 May 2019. As FinanceFeeds has reported, in May 2019, ASIC decided to extend the suspension until May 31, 2020.
The terms of the suspension allow the BBY AFS licence to continue in effect for the following purposes only:
- to ensure that clients of BBY continue to have access to an external dispute resolution scheme;
- to ensure that clients of BBY continue to have access to the National Guarantee Fund;
- to ensure that the receivers and liquidators have the legal authority to transfer a client’s “holder identification number” to another market participant with instructions from the client or to convert a licensee sponsored holding to an issuer sponsored holding in accordance with the ASX Settlement Operating Rules; and
- to ensure BBY continues to be required to have arrangements for compensating retail clients for loss or damages suffered as a result of breaches of the Corporations Act by the companies or their representatives.
