Companies listing on Australia's public market will have greater flexibility to publicise upcoming IPOs under proposals released today by ASIC.
The proposed changes extend ASIC's existing relief from Corporations Act restrictions, allowing companies greater advertising and publicity opportunities before lodging a prospectus. They respond to industry feedback received as part of ASIC's discussion paper on Australia's evolving capital markets, which commented that current IPO advertising and publicity rules do not reflect modern information-sharing practices.
ASIC's changes aim to modernise and simplify the pre-lodgement advertising framework for IPOs by:
- Bringing the rules in line with comparable international jurisdictions and other domestic fundraising regimes, such as crowd-sourced equity funding and offers made under a product disclosure statement
- Allowing offerors to communicate in a controlled and accountable way
- Helping companies gauge market interest, improve information quality and enabling timely clarification or corrections
- Providing earlier regulatory visibility of potential offers and related market activity
- Maintaining core investor safeguards by reinforcing the prospectus as the primary disclosure document for investment decisions.
ASIC Commissioner Simone Constant said, 'These proposals strike the right balance between supporting capital raising in our public markets and protecting investors. They narrow an unnecessary part of the gap between capital raising rules in public and private markets, giving companies more flexibility in communicating with investors and the market. At the same time, they maintain robust safeguards and reinforce the central role of the prospectus as a key disclosure document.
'By getting this balance right, we can encourage market participation while ensuring investors have access to clear, reliable and timely information before making investment decisions.
'This proposal is another initiative that promotes Australia's public markets as attractive for new listings. In this new financial year, we will keep working through the list of new ways we have identified to narrow unnecessary gaps between public and private markets and make sensible changes that promote thriving and fair Australian public and private markets which are an attractive destination for investment and innovation. This is about helping Australia - which is a nation of investors - to be as great a place to invest as it can be.'
Under the proposed rules, companies could advertise unquoted securities as long as they:
- identify the issuer and the seller of the security
- ensure a prospectus is made available by the time a security is listed
- make it clear where and when a prospectus will be made available
- direct investors to the disclosure document as the key source of information before making an investment decision.
ASIC is seeking feedback on its proposal by 11 September 2026.
