VANCOUVER – Telus says that it has always been compliant with Canada's foreign ownership restrictions for telecommunications companies, and called on the CRTC to dismiss the “misleading allegations” made by Globalive and Mason Capital.
In a formal response to the Commission on Monday, the telco reported that as of June 29, 32.59% of its voting shares were held by non-Canadians, an amount that falls just below the federal limit of 33.3%. This includes the holdings of its shareholder Mason, a New York-based hedge fund, which recently reported that it held a 19.98% ownership stake of Telus’ common shares.
"Globalive relies on flawed data to support its false claims, a report that added 39 million shares to our total while not accurately reporting citizenship of shareholders”, said Telus EVP and CFO Robert McFarlane, in a statement. “The CRTC should dismiss their complaint."
As Cartt.ca has reported, Wind Mobile parent Globalive called for public hearing to determine whether Telus’ recent attempt to convert to a single share structure put it over the foreign ownership limit. Shortly after, Mason added its voice to the fray, calling for the telco to publicly disclose its current foreign ownership.
Both Globalive and Mason cited reports from Broadridge Financial Solutions as the basis for their allegations. According to Telus, Broadridge reports use geographical and mailing information to provide companies with a snapshot of where their investors are based, but do not filter out short trading and other factors that can result in shares being counted more than once.
As a result, the Broadridge reports counted 214 million Telus voting shares, yet the company maintains that it has only 175 million such shares. Subsequent to Globalive and Mason's claims, Telus said that Broadridge confirmed that its reports did not accurately portray Telus foreign ownership, and should never be used for that purpose.
"Telus continues to be fully compliant with Canada's foreign ownership restrictions and has again proven that decisively with the information we put forward to the CRTC today", McFarlane added. “Telus has a reliable foreign ownership monitoring and control process involving a reservation and declaration system for non-Canadian shareholders purchasing our voting shares.”
