Tuesday, April 19, 2005

Securities Law Resources to Cut Through the Fog

I attended a lunch-and-learn session at the Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) office in downtown Toronto today.

It was organized by the Toronto Association of Law Libraries (TALL) and featured OSC librarian Wendy Reynolds and Eric Leduc, librarian with the firm of Davies Ward Phillips & Vineberg LLP.

Now, securities law is not exactly my forte. The jargon can be daunting: you've got your CSA, your OSC, the IDA, along with the MFDA and the SROs, as well as the MRRS to fit all the pieces together, if you want to call exemptions, applications, blanket orders, stop orders, national instruments and multilateral instruments "pieces". And don't confuse your FASB with your CICA, or mix up SEDAR, SEDI and SOX. You do that, you never know, they might send the RS to knock on your door at 4AM. Oh, and have you met EDGAR yet? I know there's a LivEdgar. Does this mean there's a zombie-like DeadEdgar too hiding out there somewhere ready to attack and no one has told me?

Anyway...

Well, Leduc and Reynolds did point out some great print and online resources to keep the confusion to a minimum.

Send an e-mail to Eric Leduc for the list.

One interesting resource mentioned at the meeting is a Deloitte document comparing securities policy changes implemented in the US and Canada following the introduction of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.

As the Deloitte document explains, "(T)hese changes, aimed at restoring investor confidence, broadly impact a number of stakeholders and constituencies in the marketplace, including management of public companies, public accounting firms, audit committees, and others including regulators and standard setters, investors, investment firms and analysts, and attorneys. The following table inventories various ruling activities – both in the United States and Canada – arising from the adoption of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002."

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posted by Michel-Adrien at 5:10 pm

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