The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) was created by the merger of the Australian Stock Exchange and the Sydney Futures Exchange in July 2006. It is the primary stock exchange group in Australia.

ASX is a multi-asset class, vertically integrated exchange group, ranked one of the world’s top-10 largest by market capitalisation. Its activities span: - primary and secondary market services, including the raising, allocation and hedging of capital flows, trading and investing, and price and volume discovery (via Australian Securities Exchange); - central counterparty risk transfer (via subsidiaries of ASX Clearing Corporation); and - transaction settlement for both the equities and fixed income markets (via subsidiaries of ASX Settlement Corporation).

ASX functions as a market operator, clearing house, payments system facilitator and central securities depository. ASX also oversees compliance with its operating rules, promotes standards of corporate governance among Australia’s listed companies and helps to educate retail investors. The domestic and international customer base of ASX is diverse. It includes issuers (such as corporations and trusts) of a variety of listed securities and financial products, investment and trading banks, fund managers, hedge funds, commodity trading advisers, brokers and proprietary traders, market data vendors and retail investors, as well as other listing and trading venues.