MenuThis last week has seen the spotlight placed upon the CSLR and related matters, including extensive media coverage and some major developments in ASIC’s pursuit of businesses involved in the Shield and First Guardian matters. In addition, we became aware last week of the decision of the Senate Economics References Committee to drop the inquiry into Dixon Advisory and the CSLR.
As part of the broad ASIC investigation into Shield and First Guardian, ASIC has taken action against an advice licensee, a super fund trustee and an adviser. MWL Financial Services, who has already had four advisers banned, also had their licence cancelled and both a Responsible Manager/compliance manager and director banned. ASIC announced that they were suing Equity Trustees over an alleged lack of due diligence in adding Shield to one of their investment menus. Finally, on Friday ASIC escalated it’s action against Ferras Merhi, the head of Venture Egg, which seemingly is responsible for placing more than $500 million of client money into these two products.
On Sunday night, Channel Seven’s Spotlight program and Channel Nine’s 60 Minutes program both simultaneously ran stories on the Shield and First Guardian collapses, highlighting the devastating impact that these failures have had on the investors. The Spotlight program included an interview with Ferras Merhi, where he sought to explain his role in advising his clients on these products.
We were very disappointed to hear that the Senate Economics References Committee had discontinued it’s Inquiry into Wealth Management Companies that would have involved an investigation of the actions of Dixon Advisory and the consequences for the CSLR. Given the extreme misconduct that has come to light in recent months, we continue to staunchly pursue other options for these matters to be investigated by parliament. The intense media focus on the issues across multiple gatekeeper participants involved in Shield and First Guardian, and the extreme consumer detriment this has caused, demonstrates the necessity for some form of parliamentary inquiry into what has happened in relation to these firms, Dixon Advisry, UCG and other failures.
Finally, on Friday 29 August 2025, the FAAA made a submission to the Government on the CSLR Special Levy for the 2025/26 year. In this submission, we made it very clear that financial advisers should not be obliged to pay anything above the existing $20 million sector cap, and that the excess $47.3 million should be spread across a broad range of sectors on the basis of capacity to pay. This is a decision that the Minister now needs to make, and we will continue our advocacy on this issue.
