Anita Anand, a corporate law and governance expert, will be the first holder of the J.R. Kimber Chair, a research chair for investor rights at the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law.
“We cannot and should not underestimate the importance of investor protection in today’s capital markets,” Anand says. “More than Half of Canadians are invested in our markets outside an authorized retirement savings or similar plan. Making certain investors are adequately protected is fundamental to the well-being in our society.”
The chair is known as after the author from the Report from the Attorney General’s Committee on Securities Legislation in Ontario (March 1965), which laid the foundation for Canada’s modern securities regulatory regime.
The position may be the first research chair for investor rights in North America. It had been funded via a gift from alumnus and philanthropist Hal Jackman.
“I am enormously grateful to Mr. Jackman for his remarkable and recurring generosity to the Faculty of Law,” says Edward Iacobucci, dean from the faculty.
Canada securities regulation system has been criticized as an insufficient deterrent for market abuses. Technological advances, like the rise of equity crowdfunding, and high proportions of transactions within the less-regulated private markets, have raised opportunities for investment fraud and, as a result, the requirement for new regulatory tools.
Anand’s research concentrates on investor protection including investors’ rights and remedies. Among other things, she intends to investigate whether new remedies for investors, including a remedy whereby investors regain lost funds, are warranted because of the potential contribution of those remedies to bolstering confidence and efficiency in capital markets.
