By James Langton

(March 14 – 16:20 ET) – The Alberta Securities Commission has recognized the Mutual Fund Dealers Association as a self-regulatory organization in that province.

With the ASC on board, the MFDA has now been recognized in the three key jurisdictions that originally financed the association, providing an SRO for fund dealers. The group is still waiting for provincial finance ministers to sign off on rules making membership mandatory. Once that happens the MFDA will start accepting membership applications.

Dealers are still hoping to get the provincial securities commissions to pick up the tab for the MFDA’s startup costs, which have been funded off a $12 million line of credit established by the Ontario Securities Commission, the ASC and the British Columbia Securities Commission.

David Butler, executive director of the Federation of Independent Mutual Fund Dealers, has written several letters to Ontario’s finance ministers, first Ernie Eves and then Jim Flaherty, to plead his case. FIMFD has also been lobbying the other provinces.

In a letter to OSC chair David Brown, Butler now says that Alberta and B.C. would likely share the MFDA startup costs if the OSC agrees to go along. “It would appear that as goes David Brown, so go the others,” he notes. “Mutual fund dealers are ready and willing to work with MFDA to make it a terrific SRO. But we should not have to start from behind a $12 million eight ball.”

Butler argues that the securities commissions should pay the startup costs because the MFDA was created at their insistence, and that they have the resources to pay for it.