The Autorité des marchés financiers (AMF), Quebec’s financial market regulator, has found that Montreal-based Bombardier Inc. did not breach securities law in implementing its executive compensation plan.
The plane-and-train maker’s roll-out of its automatic stock disposition plan (ASDP) likely incurred a negative perception, but did not violate securities legislation, the AMF said Friday.
Bombardier said in November, when the investigation was launched, that the plan allows some of its senior executives to sell their vested shares as an added incentive in performance-based compensation, so long as the trades are made by independent securities brokers and in line with trading parameters.
Under Canadian securities laws and Bombardier’s trading policies, senior executives face limits on their ability to sell shares in the company. The plan allows trades to be made in accordance with pre-arranged instructions given when the employee doesn’t have any material undisclosed information, the company said in August.
The AMF, which in November called on the company to suspend all related trades, “has strongly recommended that Bombardier Inc. reconsider the merits of maintaining its ASDP,” the regulator said in a release.
Bombardier said in a statement that it will follow the regulator’s recommendation and ask its board of directors to scrap the compensation plan at their next meeting.