The British Columbia Securities Commission has imposed a cease trade order against 51 companies that have missed the deadline for filing their financial statements.

Earlier this month, the BCSC said that it would impose cease trade orders on delinquent companies without warning. Close to 300 companies missed filing their December 31 fiscal year-end financial statements with the commission by the May 22 deadline.

“Investors have a right to timely and accurate information about a company’s financial state,” said Andrew Richardson, manager of Financial and Insider Reporting at the BCSC. “With this cease trade order, we are carrying out what we had promised to do if companies do not meet their financial reporting obligations to shareholders.”

Richardson said that although the 51 companies cease-traded were randomly selected, there are a number of habitually late-filing companies that have had similar orders imposed on them by the commission before.

Last year, the commission imposed cease-trade orders against 161 companies and allowed 75 of them to resume trading after they had addressed the problem. About 6,200 companies file financial statements with the BCSC each year.