December 22 – 16:25 ET) – The Ontario Securities Commission is examining the issue of selective disclosure in the marketplace. The Continuous Disclosure Team of the Corporate Finance Branch sent a corporate disclosure survey to 400 public companies.
The objective of the survey was to gather information on the corporate disclosure policies and practices of Canadian companies. The OSC received 170 responses, a 43 per cent response rate
Some preliminary results of the survey can be summarized as follows:
>71 per cent of the respondents do not have written corporate disclosure policies (respondents were divided into two groups based on their market capitalization; of those with market capitalization less than $500 million only 20 per cent have written corporate disclosure polices, while 45 per cent of those with market capitalization greater than $500 million have written corporate disclosure policies);
>81 per cent of respondents have one-on-one meetings with analysts;
>only 2 per cent of the respondents do not comment on draft analyst reports;
>27 per cent of respondents do not have a ‘black-out’ period prior to scheduled earnings releases during which no market sensitive information is provided; and
>only 19 per cent of respondents broadcast their quarterly conference calls via the Internet or by other means.
OSC staff are in the process of analysing the survey results and their implications and will consider them in determining what follow up action from the OSC is necessary and appropriate. The final survey results and best practices adopted by Canadian public companies, to the extent they are discernible from the survey results, will be released early in the new year.
-IE Staff