Quebec’s financial market regulator is reviewing Bombardier Inc.’s executive compensation plan, calling on the plane-and-train maker to suspend all related trades just hours after Quebec’s premier expressed lukewarm hopes about the future of the beleaguered company’s commercial aerospace operations.
The Autorité des marchés financiers announced Thursday afternoon it is looking into how Bombardier implemented its automatic stock disposition plan, rolled out last August. The Montreal-based company said then that the plan allows some of its senior executives to sell their vested shares as an added incentive in performance-based compensation, so long as the trades are made by independent securities brokers and in line with “trading parameters.”
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Under Canadian securities laws and Bombardier’s trading policies, senior executives face limits on their ability to sell shares in the company. The plan allows trades to be made in accordance with pre-arranged instructions given when the employee doesn’t have any material undisclosed information, the company said in August.
Bombardier said Thursday it will fully co-operate with the AMF review, and agreed to suspend all sales of shares until further notice. It noted the automatic stock disposition plan was reviewed by the regulator before it was put in place.
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