Page 14 - CCCA Magazine Summer 2015

{ Feature }

Ask Cindy Petlock how she came to be General

Counsel and Corporate Secretary at Aequitas

NEO Exchange Inc., Canada’s newest stock
ut the reality is that market player, and she candidly admits, “I’ve In 2001, Petlock left to
Petlock has spent her join the market regulation
Bcareer managing le- had a lot of happy coincidences as far as my team at the Ontario Secu-
gal risk in the convoluted in- career goes. I’ve had a career where I found rities Commission (OSC),
vestment industry, holding a becoming the Manager of
variety of different positions myself in it more than I planned it.” Market Regulation. She was
with private sector frms and introduced to the opportu-
regulators. So joining Aequi- nity by her friend Randee
tas in 2014 during its year-long odyssey to obtain regulatory ap- Pavalow, a long-time lawyer at the OSC who is now Chief Issuer
proval as Canada’s latest exchange entrant made sense. Products Offcer at Aequitas.
Petlock, who majored in math before attending law school
at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario, started her career as regulatory Changes
a retail trading compliance offcer at CIBC Wood Gundy after Again, it was a time of big change in the investment commu-
graduating with her LL.B. in 1991. Since then, she has been at nity. Shortly after Petlock arrived, the OSC recognized Market
the centre of a maelstrom that has seen Canada’s capital mar- Regulation Services Inc. (RS) as a self-regulatory body, and by
kets vastly overhauled in every aspect, from the shift in the own- 2008, RS had merged with the regulatory arm of the Investment
ership and size of investment dealers to the infamous dot-com Dealers of Canada to form the Investment Industry Regulatory
tech bubble, the rise of alternative trading systems and hyper Organization of Canada (IIROC), which is now responsible for
active electronic trading, demutualization of stock exchanges, market oversight.
and a reshuffing of the deck chairs in terms of how the capital Petlock spent a year at IIROC as a special advisor, before
markets are regulated in Canada. becoming General Counsel and Corporate Secretary in August
Toss in the fnancial crisis of 2008 and there’s not much Pet- 2008 of CNSX Markets Inc., which runs the Canadian Securi-
lock hasn’t seen in her 20-plus years working inside investment ties Exchange (CSE). The CSE is an upstart exchange that fo-
industry organizations as a lawyer. “I’m really proud of partici- cuses on emerging companies and bills itself as “the exchange
pating in a number of things that signifcantly changed our mar- for entrepreneurs.”
kets,” she says in an interview at Aequitas’s headquarters in down- “Being at an entity that was the frst new exchange in decades
town Toronto near Bay Street, where the frm’s market analysts in Canada, struggling against this very large monopoly, was very
perch over their computers watching the trading day play out. interesting,” she says.
She left the CSE in 2013 with the intention to “do something
‘Culture Clash’ else,” when she got a call from her old pal Pavalow asking if
When Petlock joined CIBC Wood Gundy, Canada’s big banks she was interested in the general counsel job at Aequitas. She
were in the process of moving into the wealth management space couldn’t say no.
in a big way, buying Canada’s biggest investment dealers and be- Aequitas is Canada’s newest exchange, founded by Jos
ginning vast expansion outside the country’s borders. She quickly Schmitt, who previously headed Alpha Trading. Alpha was
moved from retail to institutional compliance when CIBC pur- launched in 2008 to take on the TMX Inc. juggernaut, which
chased a U.S. investment frm and became more globally focused. owned the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX), the Montreal Ex-
“There was a huge and interesting culture clash going on. change (MX) and the Venture Exchange (TSXV).
There was a real integration. It was fascinating to be at the table Alpha, which was backed by a number of big banks, eventually
for that kind of stuff,” she recalls. captured more than 20% of the market share in trading volume. It
After a few years in institutional compliance, Petlock moved was planning to open its own stock exchange when Alpha’s own-
more into a legal role when CIBC decided to split law and com- ers made a successful bid in the spring of 2012 to take over the
pliance, and she had to make a decision to pick one over the company that owned the TMX in order to fend off a proposed
other. “Compliance was fascinating and I learned a lot,” she says, merger between the TMX and the London Stock Exchange.
but “when you’re in compliance, there are not that many op- Schmitt and Pavalow, who had joined Alpha from the OSC,
tions other than compliance, so I decided to do legal. I thought left not long after to form Aequitas Innovations Inc. and build
the options would be greater.” a new exchange and trading system. Susan Wolburgh Jenah,

14 CCCA MAGAzinE | SuMMEr 2015 été