A cease trade order (CTO) is a decision issued by a provincial or territorial securities regulatory authority or similar regulatory body against an organization or an individual.
There are two types of ban trading sanctions in a CTO: (1) Ban trading OF sanction, which prohibits all trading in the securities OF an organization and (2) Ban trading BY sanction, which prohibits trading BY specific individuals and/or organizations in certain securities.
Some CTOs may contain both types of sanctions.
Certain CTOs issued by securities regulatory authorities automatically take effect in other jurisdictions. These other jurisdictions will not issue separate CTOs in these circumstances. It remains the obligation of users to conduct the necessary due diligence before trading to determine whether or not a specific trade can be executed. As such, we cannot overstate the importance of reading all decisions to fully understand their scope.
By default all searches will show CTO sanctions that are in effect (“active”). To view CTO sanctions that have been revoked or have expired, select “inactive” under “ban trading status” in Advanced Search.
The user must enter an accent in the search criteria to retrieve search results with an accent (eg: a search using Confédération will retrieve a company with the name Confédération but will not retrieve the name Confederation).