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ASIC to probe banks behind failed Firmus float · The Front

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  Speaker 1: Today's biggest news from The Australian. I'm Claire Harvey with
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  Speaker 1: The Front's afternoon headlines. The bankers who got everyone excited
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  Speaker 1: about the float of data centre builder Firmus only to
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  Speaker 1: have it blow up in their faces have a new problem.
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  Speaker 1: The corporate watchdog is on the case. The Australian Securities
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  Speaker 1: and Investments Commission, ASIC, is probing the actions of the
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  Speaker 1: bankers behind the canned multi-billion dollar stock market float of Firmus.
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  Speaker 1: ASIC Chair Sarah Court told a Senate committee she's making, quote,
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  Speaker 1: targeted inquiries of the joint leader managers of the Firmus IPO.
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  Speaker 1: That's Bank of America, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley, along
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  Speaker 1: with broker Morgans. Firmus, co-founded by billionaire Oliver Curtis, was
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  Speaker 1: supposed to float on the ASX last week, but the
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  Speaker 1: initial public offering was sensationally cancelled when investors balked at
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  Speaker 1: the $ 11 share price. That's left many in the markets
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  Speaker 1: wondering about the actions of the banks, who stood to
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  Speaker 1: make hundreds of millions of dollars in fees from the float.
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  Speaker 1: The tax commissioner has admitted he didn't quite get how
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  Speaker 1: businesses use credit cards before the ATO brought in a
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  Speaker 1: ban on plastic. Rob Heffron told the Senate committee he'd, quote,
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  Speaker 1: jumped to conclusions and assumed, wrongly, that only struggling taxpayers
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  Speaker 1: would use credit cards to pay their bills. Now he
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  Speaker 1: says he understands what small business people have been screaming
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  Speaker 1: since the ban was suddenly dropped on them earlier this month.
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  Speaker 1: In fact, many businesses use credit cards to manage their
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  Speaker 1: cash flow, making use of interest-free periods to pay their
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  Speaker 1: tax bill and then pay it off in an orderly way.
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  Speaker 1: The issue has really blown up in the government's face,
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  Speaker 1: initially a cost-of-living relief measure pushed by Jim Chalmers. The
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  Speaker 1: idea was to ban any organisation from charging surcharges on
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  Speaker 1: card payments. For many businesses, that meant reorganising their pricing
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  Speaker 1: so that the cost of card transactions was wrapped up
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  Speaker 1: in the overall price of a good or service. But
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  Speaker 1: the tax office decided that meant it could no longer
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  Speaker 1: accept card payments at all because it wouldn't be right
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  Speaker 1: to fund credit surcharges from the public purse. The federal
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  Speaker 1: government declared it would push the change to mid-next year
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  Speaker 1: and that in the meantime, taxpayers will pay the surcharge.
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  Speaker 1: Now Rob Heffron says he's learned his lesson. Next time
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  Speaker 1: he'll actually ask stakeholders what they think before enacting such
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  Speaker 1: a massive change.
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  Speaker 2: The experience we have now, if we'd, I guess if
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  Speaker 2: we had the similar thing happen to us again, I
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  Speaker 2: think we'd be more active in trying to engage with
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  Speaker 2: people earlier and rather from the point of view here's
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  Speaker 2: a solution, you have now time to adjust, actually engage
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  Speaker 2: in the problem-solving activity itself.
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  Speaker 1: Check out those stories live right now at theaustralian.com.au. And
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  Speaker 1: come back to the front first thing in the morning
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  Speaker 1: for our look at what on earth just happened in
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  Speaker 1: the Israeli election and how Benjamin Netanyahu just keeps on
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  Speaker 1: keeping on. That's right here, Friday morning.