LEXPERT MAGAZINE
|
JULY/AUGUST 2017 59
| IN-HOUSE ADVISOR: SOCIAL MEDIA DISCLOSURE |
Sabrina Royer, with the Toronto office
of Bennett Jones LLP, says social media
provide listed companies with effective
means to reach their stakeholders.
"It's real-time, cost-effective and accessi-
ble," Royer says. "Initially, companies used
social media as a marketing tool, but it's
become more commonplace to use it as a
customer- and investor-outreach tool." She
adds that she sees SN 51-348 as encourag-
ing proper use of social media, rather than
disallowing it.
Merkley says that social media "allow
issuers to broadly and instantaneously
reach an audience at very low cost. And
it's skewed to young people." is includes
millennials, born from roughly 1980 to
1995, who are currently reaching invest-
ment age and are commonly defined, in
part, by their affinity for technology, and
social media in particular. "Issuers want to
reach that audience."
Van Horne sees it as going beyond tra-
ditional channels to reach "an audience
that doesn't sit around and read a Bloom-
berg terminal."
He says social media are oen used
in hiring, where they're seen by many
companies as faster and less costly than
recruiting firms. And as environmental
advocates have taken to social media to op-
pose corporate development, companies
have responded through their own online
channels. "You see a lot of that here [in
Calgary] from the larger [energy explora-
tion and production] issuers," he says. Oil
sands operators and the Canadian Associa-
tion of Petroleum Producers use a variety of
Internet media to promote their views on
responsible development.
Of course, none of these activities re-
quires the involvement of trained investor-
relations professionals. So it was perhaps
inevitable that social media efforts would
eventually cross over into the realm of se-
curities compliance.
Main says Telus company policy requires
close co-ordination between corporate
communications, investor relations and
the legal department to ensure that disclo-
sure regulations are not violated. In the ex-
ample of a development project, he says, le-
gal would take the lead in ensuring that any
website description of the project posted by
corporate communications is consistent
with disclosure information published by
investor relations.
"I'd like to think it's been inadvertent,"
Van Horne says of compliance infractions.
He agrees with Royer and Merkley that
there was never any Wild West attitude
in the business community; no assump-
tion that "anything goes" on social media.
Instances of non-compliance have simply
been part of the learning curve inherent in
adopting new communications channels.
CHRISTOPHER MAIN
>
TELUS COMMUNICATIONS INC.
Social media has a more
casual style, but you can't say
that, because social media
is more casual, you can get
casual with disclosure. You
can't. … If you weren't an
authorized spokesperson,
that doesn't change just
because you can tweet.
