Senator Nick Sherry, Minister for Superannuation and Corporate Law, has released an industry issues paper, Improving Australia’s Framework for Disclosure of Equity Derivative Products, on the issue of the regulation and disclosure of equity derivatives.

There has been market concern that there is a lack of an appropriate disclosure framework covering equity derivatives, which has reduced transparency of ownership changes and takeover moves, reduced the ability of companies to know who their effective owners are, and enabled hedge funds to outflank traditional institutional investors by using economic interests to influence companies.

Consultation will remain open for eight weeks, ending on 31 July, 2009.