Sino-Forest Suspension, CEO Resignation Underscore OSC ‘Urgency’

The moves by Canada’s main securities watchdog to suspend trading in Sino-Forest Corp. and the subsequent resignation of the chief executive officer underscores the “urgency” of the probe by the Ontario Securities Commission into the company it says may have committed fraud.

“This is unusual where they do something like this,” Edward Waitzer, a partner at Toronto law firm Stikeman Elliott LLP and a former OSC Chair, said in a telephone interview. “They only do it when they think there’s some urgency.”