The Ontario Securities Commission (OSC) announced on October 15, 2015 that it has started disclosing summary details of exempt distributions. The information that will be made publicly available, described below, is similar to that previously included in the weekly OSC Bulletin. However, it will now be disclosed in spreadsheet format (on this OSC web page), which will facilitate data accessibility and analysis of the exempt market in Ontario.

An exempt distribution is a distribution of securities that is exempt from the requirement to file and deliver a prospectus. As discussed in our recent alert titled, " Proposed amendments to report of exempt distribution," several of the prospectus exemptions include a condition that certain facts about the distribution be reported to the securities regulator in the provinces where the distribution is made. The details that the OSC is making available are taken from those reports.

Those details are: the name of the issuer, the amount of funds raised in Ontario, the number of Ontario purchasers and the applicable dates. Investors' personal information will not be made publicly available. The only detail previously included in the OSC Bulletin that will not be disclosed going forward is the type of security distributed.

The information will be posted on a regular basis to the OSC web page. Interestingly, the first posting includes all 9,334 exempt distributions between April 2014 and August 2015. That list, which is in Excel format, is a very useful tool for analysing the exempt market in Ontario during that time period.

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