4 days ago
Australian stocks sink on Thursday as the ASX itself nosedives after TPG blunder wipes more than $400m off major telco
The ASX 200 is down on Thursday as investors watch the market operator following a blunder where its mistake wiped more than $400m off the value of a major telco.
The index fell 0.2 per cent after the first hour of trading following a two-day surge where it rose about two per cent.
The ASX - the market operator which facilitates stock trading - has plunged about eight per cent after it mixed up telecommunications company TPG Telcom with private equity firm TPG Capital Asia on Wednesday - wiping about $400m from the telco's value.
The market operator put a $651m deal between the private equity firm and software company Infomedia under the telco's ticker – a unique identifier for each company.
Another wrinkle in the ASX fiasco was that TPG Capital was referred to as only 'TPG' in the first instance of the operator's public announcement.
This marks another blow for the market operator as it faces enquiries by the Australian Securities and Investments Commission over governance failures, including a trading outage late last year.
The corporate watchdog has also revealed it is in the 'final stages' of considering an application for US market operator Cboe to compete with the ASX in Australia, effectively ending the exchange's monopoly.
Meanwhile, superannuation and banking giant AMP is down 2.1 per cent after its profits rose 9.2 per cent to $131m during the 2025 financial year but came in below market expectations of $137m.
TPG Telcom is up about two per cent after it sank approximately four per cent on Wednesday following the ASX's mistake.
Wall Street rose on Wednesday in part due to a strong performance by Apple amid reports the iPhone-maker will avoid tariffs on imports from India after it vowed to invest US$100b into the US.
The Dow Jones added 0.2 per cent, the S&P 500 rose 0.7 per cent and the Nasdaq jumped 1.2 per cent.
London's FTSE 250 surged 0.1 per cent, Germany's DAX added 0.3 per cent and the STOXX Europe 600 sank about 0.1 per cent on Wednesday.
New Zealand's NZX 50 Index is up 0.2 per cent since trading began on Thursday while Japan's Nikkei 225 has jumped 0.5 per cent.
