On July 25, 2013, the Canadian Securities Administrators ("CSA") announced that they are no longer considering the implementation of a new regulatory regime for venture issuers. The CSA had previously released proposed National Instrument 51-103 and other rule amendments which would have resulted in a distinct and separate regulatory regime for venture issuers, including new continuous disclosure and corporate governance obligations.
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With recent legislation mandating that publicly traded corporations submit CEO compensation for a nonbinding shareholder vote, a systematic understanding of how shareholders vote under such circumstances has never been so important. Using simulated say-on-pay votes, this Director Notes investigates how different levels of CEO pay and company performance can interact to influence how shareholders vote.
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The Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) issued OSC Staff Notice 51-721 - Forward-Looking Information Disclosure (the Notice) which deals with the disclosure of forward-looking information (FLI). The Notice summarizes the results of OSC staff review of FLI contained in continuous disclosure documents of reporting issuers in Ontario. The Notice (1) sets out the common areas of improvements identified from the review, and (2) provides practice points. The following provides an overview of the Notice.
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The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) have published Consultation Paper 54-401 - Review of the Proxy Voting Infrastructure for a 90-day comment period. The Consultation Paper starts with an educational background summary about how Canada's complex proxy voting infrastructure operates.
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On July 30, 2013, the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) released Staff Consultation Paper 58-401 Disclosure Requirements regarding Women on Boards and in Senior Management. This follows from the Ontario government's statements regarding broader gender diversity on boards and in senior management of major businesses, not-for-profit-firms and other large organizations.
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The recent arrival of the KickStarter platform in Canada serves as a reminder that some interesting developments in the regulation of 'crowdfunding' have been occurring in the last several months. This article focuses on the exemption granted to MaRS VX by the Ontario Securities Commission, which recently authorized the very first capital crowdfunding platform in Canada.
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On August 17, 2012 the TSX Venture Exchange (TSXV) published a bulletin entitled Private Placements – Temporary Relief from Certain Pricing Requirements, which provided, on a temporary basis and subject to compliance with the bulletin, the granting of relief to TSXV issuers from certain existing pricing requirements related to private placement financings.
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Canadian M&A Q2 2013 results have not provided the desired relief from lacklustre Q1 results. However, while not much of the lost ground was gained, the sharp decline in M&A activity experienced in the first three months of 2013 appears to have subsided.
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IR group seeks speedy 'confidential' disclosure of investor positions.
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FOUR-LETTER words are no rarity on trading floors. Few are likely to cause greater alarm nowadays than 'edge', the term for one investor's nebulous advantage over others. In America authorities seem to have concluded that 'edge' is little more than a euphemism for insider trading.
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