Watchdog Wants To Improve Its Bite
Sydney Morning Herald
Wednesday August 19, 1992
MELBOURNE: The slogan could go something like this: "The Australian Securities Commission - We Try Harder". Or to lift a line from another high-profile corporate entity: "The ASC, Tailoring Company Searches to Your Needs".
Sophisticated corporate lawyers, shelf company promoters or credit search agents need not laugh. Australia's national corporate watchdog, the ASC, has embarked upon a nationwide market research project to find out whether the commission is meeting its clients' needs and is providing a competitive product.
Many business people may not be aware that the company regulator even provides a product. But with more than 2.2 million inquiries and searches completed a year through 12 national business centres - including paid requests for extracts, financial documents and company details on Australia's 850,000 companies - the ASC's market is respectably large.
The ASC took more than $187.9 million in revenue for the year ended June 30 last through both mandatory document lodging and public search facilities. Compared with the Federal Government's $129.6 million to annually fund the ASC, the profit margin is high, as all revenue raised by the ASC is poured back into the Federal Government's consolidated revenue. But, most important, the ASC is operating in a virtual monopoly market.
Mr Phil Khoury, ASC director of businesses services and the officer in charge of the marketing campaign, concedes that, in the absence of vicious competition, the ASC need not fret about whether the public likes the way it provides information. Mr Khoury says the only other competition the ASC has are mercantile agency groups, such as Dun and Bradstreet, which provide"value-added" corporate information to the marketplace.
"But in our corporate plan we have a commitment to provide service, to create a transparent marketplace," Mr Khoury says, "so after the honeymoon period of the post-Corporate Affairs Commission era - when people would tell us that anything we provided was bound to be better than the CAC - we need to know how well we are doing".
Mr Khoury maintains that the ASC is not trying to take market share from mercantile agencies but, as the ASC makes "quite a bit of revenue" from information services, he doesn't want people to be too tempted to go elsewhere.
© 1992 Sydney Morning Herald
Share This