More questions are being asked about the governance of Macquarie Group, with ASIC yesterday ASIC suing Macquarie Securities (Australia) Limited (MSAL) alleging it engaged in misleading conduct by misreporting millions of short sales to the market operator for over 14 years.

In proceedings filed in the NSW Supreme Court, ASIC alleges that between 11 December 2009 and 14 February 2024, MSAL failed to correctly report the volume of short sales by at least 73 million. ASIC estimates that this could be between 298 million and 1.5 billion short sales.

ASIC, in its first short sale reporting case, alleges the misleading conduct by Macquarie was due to multiple systems-related issues, many of which remained undetected for over a decade.

The Statement of Claim, among other things, provides detailed insights into the revenue, profits or losses and expenses of Macquarie Securities from 2019 to 2024.

Interestingly, in the financial years ended 2022, 2023 and 2024 Macquarie Securities incurred losses.

In 2024 this loss was $36 million on revenue of $316 million.

So Macquarie isn’t the slick profit machine its sometimes appears to be.