OSC publishes 2022 Corporate Finance Branch Report

TORONTO – The Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) today published its annual Corporate Finance Branch Report, an important resource to help issuers and their advisors with their reporting obligations.

Key areas of focus in fiscal 2022 included various initiatives designed to reduce regulatory burden for reporting issuers. These include new temporary exemptions from certain prospectus requirements for qualifying well-known seasoned issuers and proposed amendments to modernize the way certain documents are made available for the benefit of investors and issuers through an access equals delivery model.

The report provides issuers with guidance on trends and issues identified during compliance reviews, such as disclosure expectations concerning the war in Ukraine and observations of disclosures in the crypto asset industry. The report also provides guidance on the disclosure of non-GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles) and other financial measures, as well as MD&A disclosure.

“Capital raising in Ontario continued at a fast pace last fiscal year with the Branch experiencing record prospectus filings,” said Winnie Sanjoto, Director, Corporate Finance at the OSC. “Despite these operational volumes and new challenges facing Ontario and capital markets worldwide, our staff were able to deliver balanced, tailored, flexible, and responsive regulation in support of the OSC’s mandate.”

OSC Staff Notice 51-734 Corporate Finance Branch 2022 Annual Report is available on the OSC’s website.

The mandate of the OSC is to provide protection to investors from unfair, improper or fraudulent practices, to foster fair, efficient and competitive capital markets and confidence in the capital markets, to foster capital formation, and to contribute to the stability of the financial system and the reduction of systemic risk. Investors are urged to check the registration of any persons or company offering an investment opportunity and to review the OSC investor materials available at https://www.osc.ca.

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