Tony Davidof, then licensed by now-defunct stockbroking firm BBY Limited, received a three-year ban from providing financial advice in December 2015 after the corporate regulator found he had manipulated the price of MINI warrants (MINIs), a type of derivative issued by Credit Suisse.
MINIs derive their value from a range of things, including “a share, a share price index (including the S&P/ASX 200 Index), a pair of currencies or a commodity”, the regulator said in a statement.
Credit Suisse ceased issuing MINIs in October 2013, the regulator said.
ASIC’s investigation found that Mr Davidof had engaged in back-to-back buy and sell trades in MINIs on the ASX after he had pre-arranged the price, volume and timing of the trade with a Credit Suisse employee.
Mr Davidof was subsequently banned by ASIC, but appealed the decision to the AAT arguing that MINIs did not qualify as derivatives under the Corporations Act, and therefore were not financial products.
Mr Davidof’s appeal was upheld in January 2017, however ASIC the appealed the decision the following month, and the AAT chose to uphold the regulators appeal on 11 December 2017.
My mate at the last BBQ advised me to buy Bitcoin…Should qualify him as an adviser now…even though I didn’t get FSG, SOA or any other compliance doc’s….or maybe it doesn’t qualify him. Lets see what the author of this article thinks?
Was this individual an Authorised Representative of an AFSL and therefore a Financial Adviser or Financial Planner, or were they a stockbroker licensed with BBY Limited ??
If it is the latter, then the reporter should not continue to use the terminology ” Adviser ” in the attention grabbing headline and secondly shouldn’t refer to the individual as being banned from providing “financial advice”, as they were improperly facilitating stock trades and warrant prices etc and not providing comprehensive financial advice at all.This is just another case of the lack of attention to detail or a manipulation of the terminology to lump everyone into the same basket and damage the term
“Financial Adviser “or “Adviser” . Stockbrokers are not subject to the same compliance regime as Authorised Representives, so don’t make out that we are all the same in the name of banging up a headline!……..I thought IFA were more accurate and definitive than this example presents and an explanation from Killian Plastow would be appreciated.