All Right gents let's clear things up.
Every TSX venture company must send a version of the news to be released to IIROC before making it avalaible to public.
This is a standard procedure that is normally pretty straight forward.
A company may also decide to first request an halt to IIROC; invocating that a release is imminent. At this point, IIROC will not have received/reviewed the release at that time.
In POET's case, they didn't submit the news to IIROC and than IIROC said to POET: Boys you should halt the stock for this kind of news.
IMO, here is how this was done:
1- Internally POET's people review and approve the release
2- If another party is part of the release, the other party's people review and approve the release
3- Poet request an halt of trading to IIROC, which they did early on Monday at 7:50 PT
4- The lenght of the halt is either determine by the review/approval process required by IIROC
"The nature of the announcement and the current status of events must also be disclosed to IIROC, so that IIROC can assess the need and timeframe for the trading halt. "
5- IIROC halts the trading: Pending news
6- POET submits the news for review to IIROC prior dissemination to the markets
7- IIROC gets back to POET and either approove the release as it is drafted or ask for some modifications
8 -The news is made public
9 - The trading resume
Disclosure, I've never requested an halt for a venture company but I have submitted news release to IIROC prior to public disclosure.
HALT are often (maybe too often) used as a marketing tool.
In our case, it is my belief that the management felt the need to request an halt as they deemed the importance of the announcement.
The lenght of the halt was discussed with IIROC and I sure hope that it is POET that requested a lengthy halt.
