Prouds Jewellers, Spendless Shoes among 22 companies fined $4.4 million over late reports

• ASIC says 22 large proprietary companies paid $198,000 each over allegedly late financial reports for the 2025 financial year.
• The regulator has now received payment for 70 notices worth more than $13.7 million.
• It says 193 of the 234 companies it approached this year had allegedly not filed their 2025 reports.

The Australian corporate regulator has collected $198,000 each from 22 large companies selling everything from shoes to champagne over allegedly late paperwork.

The Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) said the infringement notices, issued over audited financial reports for the 2025 financial year, totalled $4,356,000 in its Wednesday statement.

Spendless Shoes, Pernod Ricard Pacific Holding, Menzies Aviation Holdings (Australia), Ingram Micro Holdings (Australia), Hemmes Group, Prouds Jewellers and Coral Homes are among the large proprietary companies named.

It is the largest batch yet in a surveillance campaign that has brought in more than $13.7 million from 70 paid notices since August 2025, targeting reports that shareholders and creditors use to judge a company’s financial health.

ASIC said paying a notice does not mean a company has admitted guilt or liability, and it is still investigating companies that have paid but have yet to file everything they owe.

‘Our enforcement actions over the past year sends a clear message – companies must meet their financial reporting obligations and should not assume that non-compliance will go undetected,” ASIC Commissioner Kate O’Rourke said in the statement.

“We will continue our data-focused surveillance into 2027 and will not hesitate to take further enforcement action,” she said.

Companies that ASIC approached pointed to audit problems, administrative slip-ups and too few resources, while some only learned they had to file when the regulator got in touch.

O’Rourke urged directors to check those obligations regularly and finish, audit, and file reports by the deadline, “without waiting for ASIC to intervene.”

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ASIC approached 234 companies in 2026, in fields ranging from lending and retail to insurance and technology, after approaching 217 in the last six months of 2025.

Of the 234, 193 companies (82 per cent) allegedly had not filed reports for the 2025 financial year, though 147 have since filed at least one overdue report and the others are working on theirs.

Earlier rounds named Visy/Pratt companies, which paid more than $4.1 million, Canva Group, which paid $792,000, the operators of Zara, H&M and Sephora, which paid $596,000, while Mecca companies and Mainfreight Group each paid $594,000.

ASIC has also won fines in court, including a combined total above $1.1 million for three public companies, all handed down on one day at the Downing Centre Local Court.

The reporting rules also cover public and foreign-controlled companies, companies with crowd-sourced funding shareholders, registered schemes and superannuation entities.

Large proprietary companies generally get four months after their financial year ends to file, while registered schemes, superannuation entities and disclosing entities get three.