ASIC Companies Register: Why $1M in share capital may not mean AU$1M
- Viola Pythas
- Sep 25
- 2 min read
Updated: Oct 1
You may have noticed a recent clarification on ASIC’s website regarding share capital currency. It clarifies that Australian companies can record their share capital in a currency other than Australian dollars when lodging information with ASIC in respect of shares. This typically occurs at the time of registering a new company or when issuing new shares and ASIC is notified via a Form 484.
However, ASIC has warned that its Companies Register does not provide the option to specify a particular currency. This means that anyone reviewing a company’s public record might assume the amounts shown are in AUD, even if the lodgement was made in USD, EUR, JPY, or any other currency.
At CorpSec Services, we’ve seen this first-hand. One of our clients has shares issued in USD. The Register of Members (which is maintained in accordance with s169 of the Corporations Act 2001) displays the share capital in USD, and all ASIC notifications have been lodged in USD. From our perspective, the “Total Amount Paid” recorded by ASIC is correctly displayed in USD. Yet, because ASIC’s system does not distinguish between different currencies, anyone searching the public record could understandably assume those figures are in AUD.
Consider these examples for a moment:
Share capital lodged as USD 1 million could mistakenly be assumed to be AUD 1 million, but is actually worth about AUD 1.5 million.
Share capital lodged as JPY 1 million could mistakenly be assumed to be AUD 1 million, but is closer to AUD 10,000.
Share capital lodged as VND 1 million could mistakenly be assumed to be AUD 1 million, but in fact is only around AUD 57.
While Australian companies are permitted to issue shares in foreign currencies, the problem lies in ASIC’s legacy system limitations, which does not allow for currency selection at the time of registering a company or when lodging subsequent share allotments.
ASIC has separately advised CorpSec Services that the option to record different currencies may be introduced in the future as part of the uplift to ASIC Registry systems under the RegistryConnect program. However, this would involve significant system changes, so we won’t be seeing any changes to share capital currency in the near future.
Contact us at team@corpsecservices.com.au for further information.
