Andrew Wilder, Cannabis Law Group Chair, was quoted today in Marijuana.com's article that considers why the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) afraid of Canadians doing business with American cannabis companies.
The TSX and the TSX Venture Exchange sent shockwaves through the cannabis industry by announcing on Oct. 16, 2017, that any of their listed companies involved in activities that violate US federal law — namely dealing in anything weed-related in the US — could be delisted. TSX added that although various states had legalized, marijuana was and still is a Schedule I drug on the Controlled Substances Act in the United States.
Today, that position on US cannabis still stands despite the fact that other exchanges, such as the Canadian Securities Exchange (CSE), allow Canadian companies including INDIVA (disclosure: I am INDIVA's director of business development), to have ties to American cannabis and also list on their exchange.
"There was a lot of uncertainty in the summertime [of 2017], there were a lot of articles written about it and some volatility in the stocks as a result of this," Andrew Wilder, chair of the Cannabis Law Group at Torkin Manes LLP, told Marijuana.com. "There were issues because a number of TSX-listed cannabis companies had these US operations, and [the TSX]was actively talking with them to try and figure out how to resolve the issue."
Before the announcement, companies on the TSX that fund or assist American cannabis companies obviously did not feel that cross-border partnerships were enough of a violation to risk getting delisted, so what spooked the TSX into making this restriction?
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