ASIC sell-side research guidance is being rewritten from scratch, with Australia’s corporate regulator proposing to replace a 42-page prescriptive document with an eight-page, principles-based guide it says will bring more analyst coverage to IPOs and capital raisings.
The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) published the draft consultation on Thursday. Sell-side research is the analysis that investment banks and stockbrokers distribute to clients ahead of a transaction, including the notes that circulate before a company floats. The current rulebook, known as RG 264, has been criticised as out of step with comparable regimes overseas.
What the ASIC Sell-Side Research Draft Actually Changes
The shorter document strips out prescription but keeps the structural protections that matter most to investors. Analyst pay cannot be linked to corporate advisory revenue. Research teams must remain physically and technologically separate from advisory and sales desks. Senior management sets research budgets with no input from advisory.
Analysts also cannot pitch for capital-raising mandates unless they have been wall-crossed (meaning they have received confidential deal information under a non-disclosure agreement). Once wall-crossed, they cannot publish on that issuer until the deal completes. ASIC said its expectations on conflicts of interest, inside information and research independence are unchanged.
On the thornier question of analyst involvement in live deals, the draft is candid. Firms need strong controls and should “avoid them where possible,” the document says of conflicts created when analysts work alongside advisory teams or issuers.
The consultation is designated CS 59. Submissions must reach ASIC by 5pm AEST on 21 August 2026. One question is deliberately left open: ASIC is seeking views on how valuations appear in investor education reports (analyst notes released before a prospectus is lodged) and on whether corporate advisory teams should be permitted to fact-check drafts. The current draft bars advisory teams from that step, leaving it to compliance, legal advisers and the issuer, with all valuations redacted. Anyone arguing for a looser arrangement has been asked to explain how it would support IPO activity and what controls would accompany it.
Why Australia Is Rewriting the Rules Now
The review has been building for some time. The ASIC media release on its capital markets roadmap from February 2025 set out the backdrop: declining public listings, rapid growth in private-markets capital, and the rising weight of superannuation funds reshaping where Australian companies raise money.
The ASIC REP 823 capital markets response report, published in November 2025, formally listed the RG 264 review alongside companion reviews of prospectus disclosure rules, fundraising publicity restrictions and forecasts guidance. At the ASIC Annual Forum 2025, ASIC’s Simone Constant indicated the regulator was ‘about to be consulting’ on sell-side research, confirming the proposal emerged from both the public and private markets work and ASIC’s broader simplification programme.
Industry had been pushing in the same direction. The Australian Financial Markets Association (AFMA) submission in May 2025 argued that RG 264 was overly prescriptive compared with how pre-deal investor education is handled in other leading jurisdictions, and formally recommended ASIC rework the guidance. The rewrite is, in part, a response to that call.
The simplification push goes wider than research. ASIC has already removed more than 9,000 pages of regulatory content, expanded email lodgement to 88 forms and eliminated roughly 45,000 paper filings a year. Cboe won approval in late 2025 to host IPOs and dual listings, ending the ASX’s effective monopoly on new floats.
The pattern is visible in London too. The Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) proposed letting asset managers bundle research and execution payments again in April 2024, unwinding part of the MiFID II regime that had forced the two to be priced separately. The FCA also replaced the premium and standard listing segments with a single category in July 2024. The European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) has separately said MiFID II disclosure requirements were pushing retail investors out of capital markets.
A second ASIC consultation published the same day proposes lifting the transaction value threshold for low-volume financial markets (venues exempt from holding an Australian market licence) from A$1.5 million to A$2.5 million (about $1.75 million). The existing exemption, set out in ASIC’s low-volume markets instrument, covers venues completing no more than 100 transactions and has not been updated since 2016. That instrument sunsets on 1 October, the same date as two AFS licensing relief instruments ASIC moved to preserve in May. Feedback on the low-volume paper closes on 20 August, a day before the research guide submissions are due.
The deadline of 21 August 2026 is the practical trigger for firms that want a say in how Australia’s IPO pipeline develops. What ASIC does with the valuation and fact-checking questions will determine whether the simplified guide genuinely lowers the barrier to pre-deal research, or simply makes the same constraints harder to read.
