The Ontario Securities Commission’s corporate finance branch has issued a report detailing its findings in reviews of reporting issuers over the past year.

“A key theme underlying this report is that the majority of our resources were dedicated to improving integrity in financial reporting. We achieved this by pursuing perceived deficiencies in issuers’ application of accounting requirements, improving disclosure rules and implementing new corporate governance guidelines,” the report said.

“We will continue to reinforce all of these regulatory initiatives through our ongoing reviews of, and dialogue with, reporting issuers,” it added.

The report’s findings and recommendations have been structured into five areas: risk-based reviews, continuous disclosure and prospectus findings, insider reporting issues, application issues and service standards.

In terms of its disclosure reviews, full prospectus reviews went up 6% to 121, and full continuous disclosure reviews rose 15% to 108. The biggest percentage jump was in issue-oriented CD reviews, up from just 12 in 2004 to 47 in 2005. In total, it carried out 395 CD reviews, compared with 187 prospectus reviews.

Of 582 total reviews, 301 resulted in no outcome. Of those that had outcomes, approximately 80% were commitments by issuers to enhance some aspect of their disclosure in future CD filings. “A significant number of these commitments related to enhanced management discussion and analysis disclosures and amendments or additions to SEDI filings. Other disclosure enhancements included clarifications to accounting policies, modifications to technical mining reports, disclosure improvements surrounding non-GAAP earnings measures and updating of websites for financial reporting information,” the report said.

“In 9% (18% during fiscal 2004) of our CD reviews, we identified filings that were so deficient that the issuers were required to restate and refile continuous disclosure materials, to make retroactive changes or to file materials that had not previously been filed,” the report revealed.