Mark Valentine, a former financial industry executive whose aggressive trading earned him a ban from Canadian regulators nearly 20 years ago, never really quit.

Ontario’s Capital Markets Tribunal has found that Valentine — barred for life in 2004 from holding senior roles at corporate issuers in the Canadian province — flouted that prohibition repeatedly, taking on director or officer positions at dozens of small companies.

Valentine also didn’t abide by a 15-year trading ban, the tribunal found in a written decision this week. Valentine participated in stock-lending deals that qualified as trades and was involved in the sale of millions of shares of Flyp Technologies Inc., it said.

“He repeatedly breached the trading ban by his participation in the stock secured financings,” the tribunal ruled.

Valentine, who didn’t testify in the tribunal’s hearing, admitted to breaching the bans on holding senior roles and trading, though he didn’t admit to the facts relating to those breaches, according to the ruling. He also didn’t admit to the breach on stock secured financings.

The son of a former Canadian diplomat, Valentine rose to prominence and the chairmanship of brokerage firm Thomson Kernaghan & Co. during the 1990s dot-com boom. The firm went bankrupt in 2002, not long after that bubble burst.

That same year, Valentine was arrested in Germany in a sting led by the US Federal Bureau of Investigation. He agreed to extradition to the US and eventually pleaded guilty to securities fraud in Florida.

The Ontario Securities Commission later found that Valentine had created a “culture of conflict of interest and non-compliance” at Thomson Kernaghan — improperly trading securities that enriched him at the expense of clients.

The commission opened an investigation into Valentine into possible breaches of his ban in 2020.

© 2024 Bloomberg

TAGS: Mark Valentine | Thomson Kernaghan & Co | trading

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