October 7, 2011


Richard Steinberg is the National Chair of Fasken Martineau's Securities and Mergers & Acquisitions Practice Group and practices securities law with a particular emphasis on mergers and acquisitions and corporate finance.

Daniel Batista has a broad transactional practice that includes advising boards of directors, special committees and management of clients on a wide range of strategic, corporate and regulatory matters.

Aaron Atkinson is engaged in a broad corporate/commercial practice with a primary focus on M&A transactions and corporate finance.

Murray Braithwaite is frequently engaged in litigation and non-litigation matters to address difficult legal issues from every area of law, including corporate, commercial, securities, constitutional, administrative, aboriginal, insurance regulation, accounting regulation and trusts.

Excerpt

Certainty is acutely valued in the M&A context. Accordingly, an emerging schism among securities regulators in Canada in dealing with the tactical use of securityholder rights plans – known colloquially as "poison pills" – in response to take-over bids is cause for concern. In a pair of recent decisions, securities regulators in Alberta and Ontario broke from Canadian precedent by allowing target boards to effectively use poison pills to block hostile bids indefinitely.

But the British Columbia Securities Commission did not follow suit in a subsequent decision. Instead it reaffirmed the more traditional approach to Canadian rights plan decisions, which had established that, in determining whether to set aside a rights plan, the question is notif, but when, the rights plan should go. All of which has bidders, target company boards and even shareholders asking, "Where do we go from here?"