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As director of enforcement leaves, OSC’s staffing dilemma grows

The Ontario Securities Commission says its director of enforcement is leaving to take a similar role in Hong Kong.

Analysis

Longtime director of enforcement Tom Atkinson is leaving the Ontario Securities Commission, the securities regulator revealed Wednesday.

While the move was not surprising given that rumours of Atkinson’s move to the Securities and Futures Commission of Hong Kong has been on offer in regulatory and legal circles, his departure is raising another issue that’s been hanging within the OSC for months: that the pending creation of a co-operative federal-provincial securities regulator is making the OSC a less appealing landing spot for talented employees.

“The problem – is that the co-operative regulator might come into operation at some indeterminate point, why commit to a situation with limited future prospects,” said one seasoned securities lawyer.

An interim replacement for Atkinson wasn’t immediately named, and it is expected only in “the coming weeks,” according to an early-morning news release from the OSC.

The veteran lawyer said the OSC is facing the same dilemma using the position of executive director, which hasn’t been filled since Maureen Jensen became chair of the OSC after the departure of Howard Wetston, who left the commission in November.

The short horizon isn’t the only complicating factor. After fifty years of attempting to unite Canada’s disparate patchwork of provincial and territorial regulators, great pains are now being taken to ensure participating jurisdictions don’t feel that players or even precedents from Ontario, the nation’s biggest and busiest capital market, dominate the new watchdog.

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