The Administrative Review Tribunal (ART) has varied ASIC’s decision to permanently ban Noel Northcott from providing financial services and carrying on a financial services business. ASIC found that Mr Northcott had made false or misleading statements to clients about the performance of their investments, after he used algorithms to conduct foreign exchange trading with their money.
The ART varied the banning on 7 September 2026 from permanent to a period of 10 years. The conditions of Mr Northcott’s banning were also varied by the ART, allowing him to work in the financial services industry as a supervised employee.
The ART, heard by Senior Member Spender (SM Spender), agreed with ASIC’s reasons for banning, including that Mr Northcott’s conduct was ‘… dishonest, unprofessional and displayed significant lapses in judgement and competency in the operation of the managed funds’, and considered that Mr Northcott ‘poses a risk to the public because he continues to display a general lack of insight and downplays the seriousness of his misleading conduct’.
However, SM Spender referred to the propositions set out by Justice McHugh in Rich v Australian Securities and Investments Commission (2004) 220 CLR 129 when concluding that the banning should be less than permanent. In arriving at this decision, SM Spender recognised Mr Northcott’s undertaking of regulatory training and remorse for the harm caused to investors.
Mr Northcott will be eligible to provide financial services independently from 27 April 2035.
Background
On 28 April 2025, ASIC permanently banned Mr Northcott in regard to his involvement in the Noon Investment Fund and the Quant Fund, in which Mr Northcott used algorithms to conduct foreign exchange trading with investors’ money (25-241MR). The Noon Investment Fund was found to have lost approximately $11.3 million of consumer funds, while Mr Northcott had been sending false monthly account statements to clients stating their investments had increased. He was also found to have made misleading statements about the performance of the Quant Fund.