This good info for anyone investing in canadian stocks.
Investors in Cdn Stocks. Just in case you missed this article in today's Globe and Mail here it is:
The Globe and Mail, Monday, September 25, 2000
New system to provide quick insider trade data
By Richard Blackwell
TORONTO -- Canadian investors will be able to get almost instantaneous information about insider stock trades made by directors, officers and large shareholders of public companies when a new national Internet-based reporting system is up and running early next year.
The new arrangement, called the System for Electronic Data on Insiders, or SEDI, will replace the paper-based reporting of insider trading data to provincial securities commissions.
Regulators require insiders to reveal all their trades in firms in which they are directors or officers, or in which they have substantial shareholdings. These trades are legal unless they are made with the benefit of undisclosed information.
Starting as early as next March, those insiders will submit trading data over a secure Internet connection to SEDI. It will then organize the data for regulatory scrutiny, and make it available on a public Web site.
The system is being developed and managed for all the provincial securities commissions by the the same group at the Canadian Depository for Securities (CDS) that created the SEDAR document filing system. CDS's main job is to clear all securities transactions.
The national insider trading system was originally supposed to be ready in 1999, but the timetable slipped to the end of 2000 after the project was shifted from the Quebec Securities Commission to CDS. Now, the target is March, 2001, because "the complexity was greater than anyone anticipated," said CDS vice-president Dean Peloso, who is spearheading the project.
When it's complete, the big leap forward from an investor point of view will be that data will immediately be posted on a public Web site, where anyone will be able to check what insiders have been buying or selling.
The site will allow investors to search by company, name, date or class of security, and give a history of insider filings back to the system's start date.
Currently investors in Ontario -- Canada's largest securities jurisdiction -- have to wait for the publication of the Ontario Securities Commission bulletin, or the summaries that appear subsequently in newspapers, to get any insider data.
While British Columbia's securities commission posts insider data on its Web site, the information is still gathered manually and represents only filings in that province. The new system will be national, and centralized.
When combined with new rules that force insiders in all provinces to report trades within 10 days, SEDI will put insider trading data at the fingertips of investors much more quickly.
For example, information on the $54-million worth of options cashed in by Nortel Networks Corp. chief executive officer John Roth on Aug. 9, reported in the OSC's printed bulletin on Sept. 19 and in newspapers the next day, would have been available to investors a full month earlier had SEDI already been in place.
The new arrangement will also be a boon to regulators, who will be able to more easily scan the data for potential violations of insider trading rules.
"Not only will the new system improve the timeliness of the data, it will improve the tools [that can be] used to analyze it," Mr. Peloso said.
Accuracy -- a big problem with the old paper-based system -- should also be improved.
That's because SEDI will do calculations to make sure that the holdings of an individual insider match with his or her previous filings, and that the math is correct. SEDI will even prompt filers to check their figures if they don't match.
Companies will be responsible for updating information about corporate developments that could affect the filings, such as stock splits or consolidations, or stock dividend payments. That information will automatically adjust filing data.
For corporations and the insiders themselves, the big advantage is that they'll file electronically, instead of by fax, and they'll only have to do it once. In the existing system some companies and individuals must file to multiple provincial jurisdictions.
SEDI will allow data to be entered over the Internet at any time of the night or day.
In creating SEDI, CDS was able to piggyback on what it learned from developing SEDAR, the electronic filing system for corporate documents such as prospectuses and finacial reports, Mr. Peloso said.
However, only about 800 organizations file SEDAR documents (many companies don't file directly but use filing agents to handle the work), while about 100,000 individuals and more than 5,000 companies file insider reports.
While SEDAR data entry is done over a private communications network -- not a problem with a limited number of filers -- the much broader SEDI system had to allow filing on the Internet. Fortunately, the technology has developed to the point where that is easily feasible, Mr. Peloso said.
Regulators are enthusiastic about the potential for using the Internet as a tool to keep investors better informed.
"This is our first use of the Web to help disseminate critical information to investors in a timely way," OSC chairman David Brown said. "The Web [will help] streamline our regulatory systems and [provide] access to information to members of the public."
And SEDI is only the first step, Mr. Brown said.
It will be followed in about a year by a national system to keep track of all "registrants" -- every individual across the county who is licensed to sell securities.
enjoy,
danny
