Canadian Securities Regulators Revamp Early Warning Regime

On February 25, 2016, concurrent with the publication of major changes to the take-over bid regime, the Canadian Securities Administrators ("CSA") announced significant amendments to the early warning reporting rules. Market participants who take large positions in public issuers, along with their advisers, should pay careful attention to the changes.

Since 2013, the CSA has been considering changes to the early warning system with the intent of enhancing public disclosure about significant holdings of reporting issuers' securities. One of the major proposed changes was to lower the early warning reporting threshold from 10% to 5% thus requiring disclosure when a securityholder reached an ownership level of 5%. After receiving comments on the proposal, the CSA noted various concerns and a lack of overall support concerning the lower threshold and the CSA concluded not to adopt the lower threshold in the final amendments. However, the CSA decided to implement many of