Superannuation trustee Diversa Trustees told a parliamentary committee in Sydney on Friday that a $777,399 cash bonus paid to its chief executive for the 2025 financial year was deserved, five months after it asked the federal government for a reported $239 million to cover its members' losses in the collapsed First Guardian Master Fund.
Diversa was the trustee of the super funds through which about $300 million flowed into First Guardian between 2020 and 2024, according to the Australian Securities and Investments Commission. When the Federal Court ordered the fund wound up in April 2025, Diversa still had about $243 million in it on behalf of 2,055 members. First Guardian had around 6,000 investors in total. By May this year its liquidators, FTI Consulting, had recovered $6.2 million, paid $3.8 million of that in fees, and told unitholders to expect only a partial return, with the first distribution not before mid-2027.
The company's chair Vincent Plant, chief executive Andrew Peterson and general counsel Simon Stanistreet appeared before the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services at 8.30am, ahead of a full day of questioning of ASIC under the committee's standing oversight inquiry. Asked about the bonus, Plant told the committee he believed it was deserved and that he had confidence in Peterson. Labor senator Josh Dolega said the answer "doesn't pass the pub test". "That is outrageous," he said. "Average punters would be absolutely disgusted in what you said." Liberal senator Paul Scarr called the payment "absolutely outrageous".
The bonus took Peterson's total pay for the year to 30 June 2025 to $1.72 million, up from $630,000 a year earlier, the ABC reported last October. In June the prudential regulator APRA opened a formal investigation into how Diversa makes its remuneration decisions. "APRA expects superannuation trustees to ensure remuneration decisions reinforce accountability and appropriately reflect risk and performance outcomes, particularly in circumstances where member outcomes may have been adversely affected," chair John Lonsdale said at the time. Diversa said then it was confident every decision complied with the prudential standards.
Diversa's position, repeated on Friday, is that it was the victim of a fraud by First Guardian's responsible entity, Falcon Capital, and could not have seen it coming. "We're not clairvoyants," Plant said. Committee chair Senator Deborah O'Neill replied that nobody was asking it to predict a fraud, only to protect against one, and put the trustee's model back to it: the product seller says the fund looks fine, a research house signs off, the trustee lists it. "All profit. No responsibility. That's what it looks like to me," she said. Diversa says it relied on a rating from SQM Research, which ASIC is separately suing over its ratings of the Shield Master Fund.
ASIC sued Diversa in the Federal Court in December, alleging it failed to do adequate due diligence before letting members invest, failed to monitor the fund afterwards, and failed to enforce the 50 per cent holding limit it had itself set for First Guardian. The regulator wants compensation orders, declarations and penalties. Diversa filed a defence in June calling the claim misconceived and cross-claimed against the Praemium, Powerwrap and OneVue platforms, and it told the committee it expects to spend more than $2 million fighting the case. O'Neill accused it of frustrating ASIC's investigation by claiming legal privilege over documents. "Legal professional privilege is a right and we're exercising that right where it complies," Stanistreet said.
The bailout application sits with Assistant Treasurer Daniel Mulino. Part 23 of the Superannuation Industry (Supervision) Act lets the minister grant financial assistance where a fund has lost money to fraud or theft, and the Commonwealth then recovers the cost through a levy on every other APRA-regulated fund. If it is granted, the bill lands on the balances of Australians who never heard of First Guardian. Diversa lodged the application on 2 April and has not published the amount; the $239 million figure comes from trade press reports it has not disputed. No decision has been announced. Macquarie repaid $321 million to about 3,000 members caught in the related Shield collapse, and Netwealth repaid $100 million to more than 1,000 First Guardian members, both without asking the government for a cent.
Three things are now live. ASIC's case against Diversa returns to the Federal Court on 30 October. APRA's investigation into the bonuses has no published end date. And the minister has held the Part 23 application for five months, with Diversa, which says it is responsible for the retirement savings of more than 300,000 Australians, still waiting on an answer.
