In response to the recent Consultation Paper seeking comment from market stakeholders on proposed changes to the Market Announcement process, a new Market Announcement solution will be introduced. The consultation followed on from the recommendations of an ASIC review into the September 2016 ASX Trade outage.

The ASIC report also included some recommendations for market participants, including arrangements for undertaking and reporting crossings to ensure that transactions do not occur in securities that have been ‘Suspended’ (i.e. placed into Pre Notice Received, Trading Halt or Suspend session states on ASX Trade).

The solution will provide an independent mechanism for stakeholders to receive updates to individual security trading status for price sensitive announcements and will be the primary source for such changes. The solution aims to reduce complexity around market announcement reconciliation for redundancy and failover scenarios.

As a consequence, two procedure amendments will be made to the ASX Operational Rules Procedures and Appendices (Attachment A).   

A number of changes around the processing of Market Announcements will also be introduced (Attachment B).

These changes include:

• Immediate inactivation (purge) of orders on entering the Suspend session state

• Extension to the period security status updates are processed

• Trade reporting during a trading pause

• Removal of the ‘Notice Received’ text message

• ASX Trade market timer precision

• Change to the application of session states used following a takeover or scheme of arrangement announcement

• Standardisation of the notice period following a Trading Halt or Suspension

What's changing?

The Procedure changes are:

• Procedure 4070 – Removal or retention of orders at the end of the day

  The procedure will be amended to reflect the new automated Market Announcement Platform (MAP) process.  The Suspend Session State will be configured so that orders are purged automatically on moving to Suspend. 

• Appendix 4013 – Part 3 – Takeover Bids and Schemes

  The appendix will be amended to show that the session state for specified takeover bid and scheme actions will be the Pre_NR Session State for 60 minutes. This will replace the existing process of using the Adjust Session State for 50 minutes and Pre_NR Session State for 10 minutes. ASX will also incorporate the table notes into the relevant section of the table and also remove the notes which are now obsolete.
  
  

The procedure changes can been viewed in Attachment A.

As described above there will be changes to the current processes regarding processing market announcements. Further detail on the changes to existing processes can be viewed in Attachment B.

What do I need to do by when?

It is proposed that these changes will commence on 16 July 2018 and that the Procedure changes will become effective on the same day.

Participants should ensure they have familiarised themselves with the updated ASX Operating Rules Procedures (Attachment A) and with the changes to processing of Market Announcements (Attachment B).

For information on the ASX Trade session states please refer to Appendix 4013, Part 1(a) of the Appendices to ASX Trade Operating Rules Procedures.

Need more information?

Issued by

Ben Jackson

General Manager, Market Operations

Contact information

Trading Operations
+61 (02)  9256 0677, 1300 655 560
tradingoperations@asx.com.au

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