CHATHAM INVESTORS FULLY INFORMED DESPITE NZX LISTING BREACH
Chatham Rock Phosphate Ltd. wishes to respond to an announcement today filed on the New Zealand Exchange (NZX) by the NZ Markets Disciplinary Tribunal relating to the NZX listing requirements.
Chatham’s primary listing is on the TSX Venture Exchange and has a secondary listing on NZX. NZX rules require Chatham to repeat all TSX-V releases to the New Zealand market.
The disciplinary tribunal ruled that Chatham had breached NZX listing requirements by failing to release multiple announcements to NZX at the same time they were released to its home exchange, the TSX Venture Exchange, between Feb. 24, 2017, and July 1, 2019.
“Chatham Rock Phosphate accepts it has breached NZX listing requirements but stresses the missing announcements contained information already known to the market and not any new material information,” chief executive officer Chris Castle said today.
“Most importantly, both NZX Regulation and the NZ Markets Disciplinary Tribunal agree there is no evidence the breach by Chatham has caused any measurable harm to investors.
“The missing announcements represent a breach of the NZX rules but not a failure by Chatham to release new material information to the New Zealand market,” Mr. Castle said.
“Chatham prides itself on ensuring investors are always fully informed about its activities. We always have a focus on continuous disclosure, and see communicating with our shareholders and the wider market as an opportunity, rather than a chore.”
Mr. Castle said the information was primarily administrative announcements required by Canadian securities regulations.
“The Canadian market has different reporting requirements to the New Zealand market. Management discussion and analysis announcements (MD&A) do not constitute periodic reporting. MD&A are retrospective in nature and restate information already announced to the market. As such, although they provide collated, summary information to the market they do not contain any material information likely to impact investment decisions. Quarter-year financial reporting required by TSX-V is not comparable to the NZX periodic reporting requirements.”
Mr. Castle also noted that as Chatham is not currently an operating business, there was nothing of any materiality to disclose each quarter.
He said Chatham was unaware of the breach until NZX Regulation made direct contact.
“As soon as Chatham was made aware of the missing announcements we corrected the record and have also now corrected our reporting processes.
We understand our obligations to comply with NZX rules. In our considerable history as a listed issuer (Chatham was a full listed issuer on the NZAX market from 2007 until 2017) we had an unblemished reporting record.”
A copy of the NZ Markets Disciplinary Tribunal ruling has been filed on SEDAR under CRP’s profile.
