Before entering into a settlement agreement with your provincial Securities Commission, it is important to consider how such consent orders will be viewed and applied in other provinces.  In September, 2008 Patricia McLean entered into a settlement agreement with the Ontario Securities Commission; less than two years later, she was before the British Columbia Court [...]

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The Divisional Court has recently denied the Imax Corporation and certain of its directors leave to appeal a lower court decision that gave a green light to a class action lawsuit by certain of IMAX’s former shareholders.

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In the recent decision of Zeubear Investments Ltd. v. Magi Seal Corporation[1], the Court of Appeal for Ontario had the opportunity to consider the proper interpretation of a shot gun (buy-sell) provision in a shareholders agreement. Ultimately, the court concluded that, in order to obtain the benefit of such a clause, a shareholder must strictly comply with [...]

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In recent years, much attention has been paid to amendments to provincial Securities Acts across Canada that make it easier for shareholders to sue for misrepresentations by public companies in financial statements and other public documents…

During this period significantly less attention has been paid to whether shareholder class actions might be brought under another and potentially much broader statutory remedy: the oppression remedy under one of the provincial or federal business corporations statutes. However, this may be changing.

Originally published in The Lawyers Weekly.

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On January 14, 2010, the Investment Industry Regulatory Association of Canada (“IIROC”), the self regulatory organization (SRO) that regulates all investment dealers in Canada, enacted what is almost certain to be a major expansion of its 15-year-old mandatory arbitration program. In particular, IIROC has increased from $100,000 to $500,000 the upper limit on client claims that are required to be resolved through binding arbitration if the client requests it.

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