Securities regulators are changing the way their database of cease trade orders (CTOs) works, to categorize orders as either prohibiting trading in a particular issuer, or imposing a ban on all trading by a firm or individual.
The Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) has published a new staff notice to spell out changes to the CTO database, which is a publicly searchable database containing all orders issued by provincial regulators.
Later this fall, CTOs will be classified into two new distinct groups: orders that ban trading in securities of an issuer, regardless of whether it resulted from a continuous disclosure default or an enforcement action, and; orders that ban trading by certain individuals and/or companies (again regardless of the cause).
The CSA says that this new categorization is intended to simplify the classification of orders and enhance database search results. Some orders may fall under both categories, and they will appear in both categories, with two distinct notifications sent out to subscribers, the notice says.
Additionally, the notice sets out various other changes that have been made to the database, including: doing away with stock symbols in the database, standardizing the date format, a mechanism to reduce inconsistencies in the format of company names as much as possible, the issuance of intra-day CTOs, and a change to notifications of an order’s expiry.