ASIC now facilitates the electronic lodgement of fundraising and takeover documents that have historically been provided in hard copy at ASIC offices. Further, as of 4 July 2018, the fees for a number of document lodgements and applications have increased.
Electronic lodgement of documents
ASIC have now provided for certain documents to be lodged online which were previously required to be lodged in person at the ASIC office. ASIC’s announcement regarding this development can be accessed here.
The main documents are:
- prospectuses (including supplementary and replacement documents);
- draft scheme booklets, applications for no objection letters, court orders and notices and registration copies of the booklet;
- bidder’s and target’s statements, notices of variation, supplementary documents and notifications;
- compulsory acquisition documents andnotices of meeting, including for related party transactions and acquisitions requiring member approval.
To lodge these documents with ASIC electronically, they must now be emailed to Corporations.Lodgements@asic.gov.au and must be a ‘machine readable’ PDF document that contains an electronic signature. An electronic lodgement form (and, if relevant, other ASIC cover form) must also be attached.
Documents lodged 'out of hours'
Documents are taken to have been lodged with ASIC at the time the email and, once documents are lodged, ASIC will provide a confirmation email and invoice which must then be paid in person or via cheque.
However, ASIC have noted that documents lodged outside business hours will attract ‘greater scrutiny’ and that they will make enquiries as to why the lodgement could not occur during business hours (and pay particular attention to the timing and deadlines of offers).
Commencement of Fee for Service Legislation
Fees for a number of key documents reviewed by the ASIC Corporations team have been substantially increased, whilst fees have also been introduced to lodge some documents where historically there has been no fee. These fee changes took effect on Wednesday 4 July 2018.
ASIC Information Sheet 30 sheet has been updated to reflect the new fees and can be accessed here.
Some example fees for commonly lodged documents include:
- Prospectus- $3,206
- Bidder's statement for off-market bid - $5,264
- Target statements for off-market bid - $2,565
- Lodgement of notice of variation of bid - $802
- Supplementary statements - $802
- Draft explanatory statements - $5,290
- Lodgement of registration copy of scheme of arrangement - $321
- Lodgement of notice of meeting for related party benefit - $802
Also, all applications that are processed by the Corporations team, unless specifically provided otherwise, will incur a fee of $3,487 for each head of power exercised by ASIC to grant relief. This includes applications for approvals, exemptions, declarations, consents or statements, and does include No Action Letters.
Please contact Rohan Harris or Rory Maguire from our Corporate & Commercial team should you require further information or advice in relation to lodging documents with ASIC or other corporate advisory matters.
If you'd like to stay up to date with Russell Kennedy's insights, please sign up here.