As part of a Wealth Management Project on which it embarked in 2014, ASIC has permanently banned Warren Scott Acworth, a financial advisor in Queensland, from providing financial services.

ASIC investigated some trading that Acworth undertook on behalf of a client in MINI warrants (a form of derivative) between December 2015 and May 2018 in his capacity as an advisor at Macquarie Equities.

ASIC said that he misled his client in relation to a financial product and dishonestly misrepresented the value of the client’s portfolio to him or her on 19 separate occasions, engaged in trading without his or her proper authority and transferred A$185,000 (US$123,515) between the client’s accounts without authority. ASIC has found him to be, in the words of the Statute of Edward III, "not of good fame." It has put his name on its Banned and Disqualified Persons Register.

Mr Acworth has the right to appeal to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal for a review of ASIC’s decision.

The Wealth Management Project is ASIC's name for its campaign to beef up compliance at the major firms that provide financial advice. These firms are the National Bank of Australia, Westpac, the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Australia and New Zealand Banking Group and AMP.

A MINI warrant is a form of derivative in that it derives its value from another asset which is commonly referred to as the ‘underlying instrument’ or ‘reference asset’. The underlying instrument of a MINI warrant may be, among other things, a share, a share price index (including the S&P/ASX 200 Index), a currency or a commodity.