PhD in Securities law

Actually, it’s not so hard.  The PhD is self-directed and I have an excellent supervisor .  I’ve been doing it for two years, with two to go.  My research is how “junior issuers”  (most of which trade on the Toronto Venture Exchange and the Canadian National Stock Exchange) are affected by Ontario’s detailed, and thus voluminous, securities laws.  The thesis (and I won’t give too much away or I’ll spoil the movie) is that detailed rules are not always necessary because most junior issuers are managed by an “interpretative community” of well-educated professionals.  In other words, “the street” recognizes what “full disclosure” and “material fact” means without the glut of rules.  Enforcement is not so much a question of what should be disclosed, but whether a promoter or broker has gone greedy and failed to “do the right thing”.  London regulates with principles.  New York regulates with rules.  Ontario, as may be expected, is somewhere in-between.  Here is an interesting article in the New Yorker last year.  New_Yorker_Apr_2008.PDF