(March 7): Australia’s main securities exchange ASX Ltd was fined by the markets watchdog for more than eight thousand lapses in trade order transparency.

ASX paid A$1.05 million (RM3.2 million) to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission — the first time the regulator has slapped a market operator with an infringement notice, ASIC said in a statement Thursday.

The exchange breached the rule requiring so-called pre-trade transparency on 8,417 occasions between April 2019 and December 2022, meaning information about orders was not available for some equities products, the commission said.

“ASX strives towards the highest standards and this includes providing appropriate pre-trade transparency at all times,” Helen Lofthouse, ASX chief executive officer, said in a separate statement. “The availability of pre-trade information is fundamental to a fair and transparent market, and we take seriously any impairment to this. We are very disappointed this error happened.”

The penalty is just the latest in a protracted list of woes at the Australian bourse. ASX ditched a plan in 2022 to replace its aging clearing and settlement platform with a blockchain-based system and last year moved to hire Tata Consultancy Services to build a replacement platform.