Lawrence Elliot Ritchie

Lawrence Ritchie is a Partner in the Disputes group at Osler, Hoskin & Harcourt LLP. He is a litigator and a former securities regulator. He chairs Osler’s cross-disciplinary Risk Management and Crisis Response practice group and co-leads its national Capital Markets Regulatory Enforcement team.

Among other things, he advises public corporations, their directors, officers, and in-house counsel on avoiding, preparing for, managing and responding to extraordinary “crisis” situations, including regulatory investigations and actions that flow from them.

He acts for clients in connection with conducting and responding to internal and regulatory investigations, and defends parties in regulatory proceedings, class actions and related litigation. He has extensive experience, in particular in identifying and addressing regulatory and other enforcement issues encountered by participants in the Canadian capital markets, as well as on corruption matters, providing proactive corporate governance and other risk management advisory services, and represents clients when necessary to address relevant matters with regulators, self-regulatory organizations and in the courts. He has appeared at all levels of courts in Canada, including the Supreme Court of Canada, and numerous administrative tribunals and repeatedly been recognized as one of Canada’s leading securities litigators in legal ranking services including Chambers Canada , Lexpert including Lexpert/American Guide to the Leading 500 Lawyers in Canada , Benchmark Litigation Canada and Best Lawyers.

In 2007, Larry was appointed Vice-Chair of the Ontario Securities Commission, and served as Executive Vice-President and Senior Policy Advisor to the Canadian Securities Transition Office (the organization supporting the federal government’s initiative for a Canadian common securities regulator) from late 2009 to 2014, returning to rejoining Osler thereafter. In 2015-2016, Larry served as a member of the 3-person expert panel which recommended that the Ontario government establish the Financial Services Regulatory Authority (FSRA), to replace the Financial Service Commission of Ontario (FSCO) and the Deposit Insurance Corporation of Ontario (DICO) to regulate much of the financial services and pension sectors in Ontario. The report was delivered in March 2016 and its recommendations largely implemented. In 2018, Larry was