ASIC v. Interactive Brokers (marking the close, 2023)

Settled

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In September 2023 ASIC reported that Interactive Brokers Australia Pty Ltd had paid an A$832,500 infringement notice penalty after its Markets Disciplinary Panel found it negligent in failing to identify a client's suspicious closing-auction orders in Orthocell shares and reckless in letting the client keep trading after ASIC raised concerns. Payment resolves the notice; the client's conduct is the marking of the close.

The record

What was ordered

Civil penalty

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Disgorgement

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Prejudgment interest

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Total relief

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Alleged gain

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Penalty as published

A$833k

A dash means the release did not state a figure we could extract, not that the figure is zero. Penalty and disgorgement are stored separately so aggregates across the library do not double-count the same dollars. This regulator states penalties in AUD. The figure is recorded as published and is not converted, so it does not appear in the USD totals or medians used elsewhere on this site.

What is alleged to have happened

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission announced this matter on September 20, 2023 as release 23-255MR. The respondent is Interactive Brokers Australia Pty Ltd (0 individuals, 1 entity); earlier versions of this record named a US company and stored the penalty as US dollars. The Markets Disciplinary Panel issued an infringement notice, which the firm paid.

The Panel found that a client placed orders in the ASX closing single price auction between March and November 2021 that were entered or amended late, for very small volumes, and held or returned the price of Orthocell shares to the day's high, and that the firm ought reasonably to have suspected they were meant to raise the closing price and create a false or misleading appearance. The client's trading triggered 44 marking-the-close alerts on the firm's own systems. After ASIC contacted the firm on October 14, 2021 the client was allowed to keep trading, alerts were slow to close and a suspicious activity report was lodged only on November 5, 2021.

The Panel found the firm negligent in failing to identify the activity, reckless in allowing further suspicious orders, and short of the organisational and technical resources the rules require. The A$832,500 penalty is stored in the native-currency field only. The charge is the firm's compliance failure; the manipulation described is the client's.

For the regulator's own account of the facts, read the primary document linked above.

What technique is this, and how does it work?

This action is tagged with one technique in our taxonomy. The tagging is ours: regulators charge statutory provisions, not technique names, so the mapping is an editorial judgement described in our editorial policy.

• Marking the close — see how it works, what statute it engages, and every other action tagged the same way.

Timeline

1. 2023-09-20 ASIC media release

Primary documents

Everything on this page derives from the documents below. Where our summary and the primary document disagree, the primary document is right.

• ASIC media release

The linked release is published by the issuing regulator under its own terms. Our summary and narrative above are our own writing.

Related actions

Other actions in the library sharing at least one technique tag with this one.

Record added September 10, 2026. submit a correction.