Australia's stock exchange operator will pay a $20.5 million penalty after making a misleading statement that the corporate watchdog says risked undermining confidence in Australia's financial markets.
The deal means ASX Ltd will avoid a trial in relation to three statements made four years ago regarding the status of a multi-million-dollar project to upgrade its clearing and settlement system.
The work on CHESS involved replacing the 25-year-old technology with a distributed ledger, the same technology used by cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin and Ethereum.
The ASX told investors in a February 2022 statement that the project was "progressing well", but six weeks later announced there was a strong likelihood that its go-live date would be delayed.
It later scrapped the project and wrote off costs of around $245 million to $255 million.
