What did you do, ASX?

On Monday, October 12, ASX launched their new website, www2.asx.com.au.

Unfortunately for the first day it did not display ASX Announcements. There was a message on the home page which said...

"ASX announcements are currently not displaying on the ASX website. All company announcements are available to view via brokers and news agencies."

ASX’s new website was unable to show ASX Announcements on the first day.

What this meant for companies and investors is that anywhere a link to an announcement on the ASX website is stored, that link was broken.

To be fair, there are lots of other great information on this new site, and it seems much easier to navigate, even if a little slow on its first day.

Fortunately for IRM clients, their announcements are stored in their own website database, and don't rely on the ASX website, so all IRM clients' announcements are working as usual.

What does it mean to have no announcements on the ASX platform?

• If a company's ASX Announcement page on their website contains links to the announcements on the ASX website, all those links were broken.
• If a company has sent out an email to its investors including a link to an announcement on the ASX Website, the link in that email was broken.
• If a company CEO or IR person wants to send or post a piece of their news and needs it to be from the ASX website, they couldn't communicate with their investors.
• An investor who relies on the ASX website (rather than their broker site) for ASX Announcement news was in the dark.

As a website provider, it defies belief for us that a new site could go live with such a huge problem.

This debacle supports IRM's belief that each company should be the reliable source of truth for its own ASX Announcements, and not rely on any third party, not even the ASX.

Your website should be the reliable source of ASX Announcements, as in IGO's example here.

Does your website rely on a link to the ASX website? Do your Email Alerts contain links to the ASX Website? Does your IR consultant send emails that have links to the ASX Website? They were all broken. 

If you are concerned about the investor information on your website and would like a more reliable solution, IRM offers IRM Newsroom for plugging into any website.

If you are an IR consultant who uses links to the ASX website, our multi-ticker version of IRM Newsroom is for you. 

We are ready for action and can put up new clients on IRM Newsroom in just a few days.

Get a FREE TRIAL of IRM Newsroom HERE.

Or call us on +61 2 8705 5444 / email clientrelations@irmau.com to share your views or just chat about what it means.