The Australian Securities and Investments Commission
(ASIC) has announced it has completed a strategic review.

The key changes ASIC is making in order to be closer to the
market and to
take emerging trends into account more quickly are:

• additional investment in market research and analysis;
• the appointment of an experienced External
  Advisory Panel drawn from a variety of sectors of the economy in order
  to advise ASIC’s Commission on market developments and potential
  systemic issues;
• abolition of the four current ‘silo’
  directorates of ASIC and replacing them with 17 outwardly-focused
  stakeholder teams covering the financial economy (e.g. teams for retail
  investors and consumers, investment managers, investment banks,
  superannuation funds and financial advisors);
• additional resources directed to the
  supervision of brokers and intermediaries and to operators of
  exchange-traded products and to surveillance of exchange-traded
  markets; and
• a better balance between national and regional initiatives (e.g. more resources into Perth and Western Australia.). 

ASIC will retain its strong approach to enforcement.
ASIC will now have six main enforcement or deterrence teams (instead of
one large directorate). Each team will be tasked with specific
responsibilities such as insider trading, major fraud, and
international fraud and teams for other significant misconduct.

ASIC will retain current staff levels of 1600. ASIC
will carry out the restructure within its current budget and has not
asked the Government for additional resources for the 2008/09 financial
year.

The new arrangements take effect from now and will be fully implemented during the next four months.