Manager – Risk Transformation

ASX creates deputy CISO role. Aug 31 2026 6:26AM Key points. * The ASX has created a new deputy chief information security officer role, with Hanlie Botha appointed as its first holder. * Botha joins ASX from Ticketek Entertainment Group, where she served as CISO for the past nine months. * ASX CISO Tristan Geering has held that role for a decade and has been with the company for 26 years. The Australian Securities Exchange has created a deputy chief information security officer role, with Hanlie Botha taking the inaugural post. Botha joined ASX from Ticketek Entertainment Group (TEG), where she was its CISO for the past nine months. She has also previously held cyber security roles with the likes of Woolworths Group and Ausgrid. "Hanlie Botha's appointment as deputy CISO is a new role to support ASX with the ever-increasing efforts required to protect ASX from cyber threats," ASX CIO, Tim Whiteley told iTnews in a statement. "Really excited to be here, joining a great team guarding the heart of Australia's financial markets," she wrote. ASX's CISO Tristan Geering has held the role for the past decade, and has been with ASX for 26 years. A TEG spokesperson was contacted for additional comment.

AUSTRALIA: ASX launches ETF Bond and Credit Index Futures with Bloomberg Indices. Monday August 24 2026 News Source: Global Exchanges Focus: General - Global Exchanges Type: General Country: Australia On 24th August 2026, Australian Securities Exchange (ASX), in collaboration with Bloomberg Indices, launched Australia's first exchange-traded Bond and Credit Index Futures, giving institutional investors a simpler way to access and manage exposure to Australian fixed income markets. The new contracts are based on the Bloomberg AusBond Composite Index (BACM0) and Bloomberg AusBond Credit Index (BACR0), two widely used index benchmarks across Australia's fixed income market. One tracks a broad mix of Australian bonds, including government, semi-government, supranational and corporate bonds, while the other focuses on Australian corporate bonds. By using these contracts, investors can manage risk or gain market exposure without needing to buy or sell a large number of individual bonds. This can help fund managers, superannuation funds and ETF issuers manage portfolios more efficiently, particularly when responding to market movements, managing cash flows or adjusting fixed income exposure. The launch brings a globally established product structure to Australia and expands ASX's interest rate derivatives offering, introducing the first exchange-traded futures contracts over Bloomberg AusBond Indices. Click on the above link for further information

From rubbish to rail: Global firms feast on undervalued ASX companies. Corporate leaders lament a culture of "short-termism" on the ASX, as cashed-up global asset managers quietly scoop up undervalued industrial giants. Aug 23, 2026 - 4.00pm In the past four months, a torrent of takeover bids worth a combined $25 billion targeted more than a dozen Australian publicly listed companies. Over half of the bids have been made by cash-rich private equity groups or sovereign wealth funds that are rolling in cash and are hunting unloved companies such as Cleanaway, Australia's largest rubbish collection business, which is the subject of an opportunistic $9.4 billion bid. This year was supposed to be one where more private companies sought listings on the ASX. Instead, the reverse is happening: more public companies are going private, continuing the hollowing out of Australia's public equity market. In the past five years, the number of listed companies on the ASX has fallen by 8 per cent to 2045. This trend is adding to the woes already facing the stock exchange operator, the Australian Securities Exchange, which has been under scrutiny for its technology and management failures. At least one businessman, Andrew Catsoulis, a founder of National Storage, blames the short-term focus of institutional investors, who are worried about their stock market returns for clients and increasingly lack the patience that some companies need to deliver on a five- to 10-year plan. Catsoulis has seen both sides of the coin. He founded National Storage with his wife, Karen, in 1995 and grew it into a business with 300 sites offering lockable storage boxes. It listed on the ASX in 2013 with a market value of $200 million. It was bought out earlier this year by Canadian asset manager Brookfield and Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC for $4 billion. "Certainly, that increasing lens of short-termism is not helping," said Catsoulis, noting that the market failed to take a long-term view of a company and how to expand its business. "I do think it's a shame, it's really the last bastion of entrepreneurship. I don't like the fact that public markets are becoming less relevant." On the other hand, he said the glare of public markets is intense and that compliance and increasingly onerous corporate governance requirements have made them less appealing. "It's a very, very unforgiving environment where you are also dealing with increasing regulation, corporate governance and shareholder activism. What's happened is that the historical view of the opportunity with an IPO has changed." Investors hoping that some companies bought by private equity players five or six years ago might return to the ASX are also out of luck. Instead, many of those companies are being traded between private equity groups and sovereign wealth funds. Aged care homes operator Estia Health, which was owned by Bain Capital for almost three years, was among the pipeline of companies mooted for a possible public listing. It was sold instead for $2.5 billion to global asset manager Stonepeak. Pet care and vet clinic group Greencross, which has been owned by private equity firm TPG Capital since a buyout in 2019, had been pursuing a possible public listing, but that was put on hold after it entered into talks to be sold to supermarket giant Coles. Those talks were ultimately scuppered when talk of the deal leaked in July prompting an investor backlash that led to Coles abandoning the deal. This year, the takeover offers have come thick and fast. US private equity fund TPG Global made a $658 million bid for Equity Trustees, the troubled ASX-listed wealth management firm that is being sued over its connection to the Shield and First Guardian collapse. Plumbing supplies group Reliance Worldwide received a $4.1 billion bid from global asset manager Brookfield. A consortium, including private equity group KKR, is well advanced on a $7.7 billion bid for general insurer network Steadfast Group, while billboards company oOh!media has agreed to a $1 billion buyout by infrastructure investor I Squared Capital. One of Australia's biggest car leasing groups, FleetPartners, is the subject of a bidding war among three suitors, while logistics giant Qube disappeared from the ASX earlier this month after an $11.7 billion takeover by a Macquarie Asset Management-led consortium. Yarra Capital's head of Australian equities Dion Hershan said private equity groups are having a field day with a large pot of patient capital. "Benchmark awareness among investors and short-termism are setting up a great private equity vintage," Hershan said. "Private equity firms are rightly exploiting the glaring inefficiencies among many companies that have short-term issues to contend with; it's a fertile environment," he said. Private equity groups have around $42 billion of "dry powder" ready to deploy, according to the Australian Investment Council. Goldman Sachs Australian equity strategist Matthew Ross, said there is a large pool of funds looking for a home. "Estimates of global buyout capital have roughly tripled over the past decade, so financial sponsors have a lot more capital to deploy," Ross said. The private equity funds are also increasingly joining forces with family offices and sovereign wealth funds. "Super funds, sovereign wealth funds, and family offices have all grown in scale and sophistication and are becoming more active, and they often invest alongside a buyout fund to manage the process," Ross said. Private equity groups are also spared the backlash that ASX-listed companies can experience when they make a bid. "We've seen some situations where ASX firms have walked away from potential transactions after their own share prices have fallen in response to reported deals," Ross said. "The Coles situation, where it got cold feet on a potential Greencross pet group buyout, was a classic example." Are the chief executives of large listed companies becoming more nervous that they may also be picked off or targeted by private equity firms, sovereign wealth funds, or global pension groups? Graham Chipchase, the chief executive of $25 billion logistics giant Brambles, said the best defence is to keep delivering on forecasts. "All you can do is deliver what you say you are going to deliver. You've just got to stick to your knitting," he said. MST Marquee senior research analyst Hasan Tevfik said many industrial companies with limited growth prospects are difficult to value for investors. "There is a level of entrenched mispricing in the Aussie equity market. Most investors focus heavily on profits and cash flow momentum and are prepared to value companies generating both quite highly. However, many investors struggle to value companies that are not growing," he said. Tevfik points to Cleanaway's network of assets across Australia that "would be extraordinarily difficult for a competitor to replicate". Tevfik also said the lack of IPO prospects emerging from private equity ownership has, in part, been caused by scepticism from investors who are once-bitten, twice shy. "Many previous private-equity IPOs have been dismal performers after listing, leaving active managers hesitant to back the next deal," he said, pointing to examples such as Myer and Dick Smith Holdings. "A common complaint from institutional investors is that these businesses offer very little upside once they reach the public market. Costs have already been cut, balance sheets have often been leveraged, and the obvious growth opportunities, if there were any, have already been exploited." Secondary private equity transactions, in which a private equity fund buys from a peer rather than pursuing an IPO, have become more common. Australia's second-largest pub group, Australian Venue Company, has had a succession of private equity owners over the past three years. It is now controlled by private equity groups PAG and CVC, which each hold 45 per cent, with management owning the remainder. CVC bought its holding last year from PAG, which valued the pub group at $2.1 billion. PAG originally bought into Australian Venue Company from another private equity operator, KKR, in 2023. Goldman Sachs' Ross said secondary private equity transactions have increased significantly, along with the rise of "continuation" funds - investment vehicles that allow investors to cash out - which, in turn, enable private equity firms to delay exits beyond the typical five to seven years. Morningstar senior equity market strategist Lochlan Halloway expects more bids to arrive for public companies from hungry private money. "The ASX overall is richly priced, but that hides a lot of dispersion. Many mid-and-small caps have been smashed in the flight to quality, and that's where PE firms seem to be looking," he said. If that valuation wedge persists, Halloway said the takeovers will continue. However, James Posnett, the general manager of listings for the ASX, cautions against "definitively attributing the [takeover] activity to a single driving factor". "In general we view takeovers, including transactions led by private capital, as a normal feature of healthy and competitive capital markets," he said, adding that public and private markets play complementary roles across the capital life cycle. "Private capital can be an important source of ownership and funding," said Posnett. "While public markets offer distinctive advantages: transparent price discovery, liquidity, ongoing access to follow-on capital, strong governance and disclosure standards, and participation by a broad base of retail and institutional investors." If there are fewer public companies, however, it undermines the ASX, which has historically been the place for those wanting to invest in the country's most important companies.