Prospectus Exemptions

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The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) published amendments (Amendments) to National Instrument 45-106 Prospectus Exemptions and CSA Staff Notice 45-308 Guidance for Preparing and Filing Reports of Exempt Distribution under 45-106 to change the information required within Form 45-106F1 Report of Exempt Distribution (Report).

The Amendments provide more flexibility regarding the certification requirement, streamline the information required to be gathered by filers and address certain concerns raised by foreign dealers and Canadian institutional investors.  The main changes to the Report are provided below.…

Continue Reading CSA Amends Requirements for Reporting Exempt Distributions

On April 20, 2017, the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) released Staff Notice 45-323 (Notice). The Notice provided an update on the use of the rights offering exemption available to reporting issuers (Exemption) under section 2.1 of National Instrument 45-106 Prospectus Exemptions, as of December 31, 2016, approximately one year after it was adopted in its current form.

A rights offering is intended to allow reporting issuers to raise capital, while providing an opportunity for existing security holders to protect themselves from dilution by participating in the offering on the basis of their proportional interest. In its original form, prospectus-exempt rights offerings were underutilized, as the excessive time and costs associated with such offerings made them an unappealing option for issuers. On December 8, 2015, in an effort to encourage greater use of prospectus-exempt rights offerings, the Exemption was amended to require simplified plain-language offering materials, often using a question and answer format, and allowing for an increased dilution limit of 100%.

In the Notice, the CSA noted that in the first year of the amended Exemption, the time required to complete a rights offering was reduced from approximately 85 days to approximately 38 days. It is therefore not surprising that a total of 30 rights offerings were completed across all industries, raising approximately $247.6 million – a marked increase from the past average of 13 rights offerings per year. In these 30 rights offerings, an average of 39% of the outstanding securities of a certain class were issued and 48% of the amounts being raised were from insiders who often acted as stand-by guarantors.…

Continue Reading Update on Use of the Rights Offering Exemption

On January 12, 2017, the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) published Multilateral CSA Staff Notice 45-322 Potential Concerns with the Structure of Rights Offerings. The notice, issued on behalf of the securities regulators in Ontario, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Alberta, is a warning to issuers who may be perceived as taking improper advantage of the…

On October 31, 2016, the Alberta Securities Commission (ASC) adopted Multilateral Instrument 45-108 Crowdfunding (MI 45-108) which will allow small or medium sized businesses (Target Businesses) to raise more capital through crowdfunding offerings across multiple jurisdictions in Canada than is possible under ASC Rule 45-517 Prospectus Exemption for Start-up Businesses (ASC Rule 45-517) which was adopted by the ASC on July 29, 2016.  Both MI 45-108 and ASC Rule 45-517 (collectively, the Growth Initiatives) provide Target Businesses with an exemption from prospectus requirements.  The Growth Initiatives are in place of proposed MI 45-109 Prospectus Exemption for Start-up Businesses published by the ASC and the Nunavut Securities Office.

The Growth Initiatives are aimed at addressing Target Businesses’ need for a cost effective and simple way to raise capital in a difficult economic environment by raising small amounts of money from a large number of people, commonly referred to as crowdfunding.  The Growth Initiatives offer different avenues that Target Businesses can use to overcome the hurdle of attracting investment without the high transactional costs of completing a prospectus offering.…

Continue Reading New Crowdfunding Prospectus Exemption in Alberta