Australia’s corporate watchdog is suing the nation’s largest market operator, ASX Limited, for alleged misleading statements about one of its projects. 

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission made the announcement on Wednesday morning and said the statements relate to its replacement plan for computer systems used to record shareholdings and manage the settlement of share transactions.

It alleges statements made in ASX announcements on February 10, 2022, that the project remained “on-track for go-live” in April 2023 and was “progressing well” were misleading.

Those representations were misleading and deceptive because, at the time of the announcements, the project was not tracking to plan and ASX did not have any reasonable basis to imply it would meet future milestones, according to ASIC. 

Chair Joe Longo said the the statement’s were a “collective failure” by the ASX board and senior executives.

“Companies and market participants rely on what the ASX says about its operations to make their own decisions and investments,” Mr Longo said.

“We expect the ASX to be a place to list and invest with confidence. When the ASX falls short, it has wide ranging consequences across the market.”

ASIC is yet to determine the penalty it will seek for ASX’s alleged contraventions.

ASX has been contacted for comment.

This post was originally published on Michael West.