ASIC concerns addressed by manager

ASIC ordered Trilogy to pull two offers, the Trilogy Monthly Income Fund and Trilogy Melbourne Office Syndicate, Cheltenham, from market just over a week ago as it had some questions about statements in the schemes' product disclosure statement and advertising material.

ASIC’s concerns were with the fund manager’s PDS activity, including the use of “headline rates of return” and the use of “ratings statements” without providing additional relevant information.

In addition, the regulator found a number of disclosure failures, including “failure to address benchmark disclosures or meet disclosure principle information standards as outlined in relevant ASIC regulatory guides”, and concerns around a lack of “clear, concise and effective disclosure of the structure and nature of the product being offered”, as well as “comparisons of the schemes to other financial products without disclosing the differences between these products”.

Trilogy responded to all points raised by ASIC and lodged a supplemental PDS.

It says that post the credit crisis, this is not an unusual occurance in terms of ASIC issuing interim stop orders in order to change or tighten language around a PDS or advertising.