Aneka Jiwaji on Seeing Securities Disputes Before They Reach Litigation

Aneka Jiwaji had long been interested in the interplay between securities litigation, regulation and civil litigation. When she joined the BC Securities Commission as Litigation counsel in the Enforcement division, she began working more deeply in securities law.

“I started to think to myself, wouldn’t it be nice to build some sort of further expertise in this area,” she says, including “the policy behind things and the reasoning behind it.”

Aneka considered pursuing a postgraduate degree for some time. Several years into her legal career, she decided the timing was right and enrolled in Osgoode’s Professional LLM in Securities Law.

Much of what Aneka wanted to learn sat outside the litigation work she already knew well. She wanted to understand the landscape before a dispute occurred and focused on taking courses dealing with board governance, mergers, takeover bids, shareholder activism and other aspects of corporate decision-making.

“A lot of the times as litigators, we only see that when those obligations are not met,” she says of directors’ duties. “We’re dealing with claims where there’s already been an alleged breach of fiduciary duty or an alleged breach of duty of care.”

The courses took Aneka further into how boards operate, the decisions they make and the dynamics that can lead to shareholder activism or litigation. She says she can now advise clients earlier on how to navigate some of those situations and potentially avoid litigation and other governance disputes.

The LLM also gave Aneka room to refresh areas of her commercial litigation practice beyond securities law. She chose Corporate Remedies from the Business Law LLM as an elective course, reflecting the shareholder disputes, derivative actions and other corporate matters she was increasingly handling.

The intensive course brought her back into the statutes and current case law governing corporate remedies. “It gave me so much confidence to really delve into those areas again when I rejoined private practice after my time at the Commission,” she says.

After leaving the Commission and returning to private practice, shareholder disputes have become a significant part of Aneka’s practice. The course gave her dedicated time to revisit the legislation and leading decisions in an area she now regularly represents clients in through her advisory and litigation practice. She valued the opportunity to work through the leading cases and statutory provisions through an academic lens, something she says can be difficult to find time for in day-to-day practice.

Her academic work also gave her an opportunity to examine the regulator’s role from another angle. Aneka wrote her LLM research paper on the use of statutory enforcement powers by regulators in British Columbia, including how courts review the exercise of those powers at the appellate level.

Now practising on the defence side, she follows how courts respond to the exercise of regulators’ broad enforcement powers. In particular, she is interested in cases where courts determine whether those powers have been exercised within the limits contemplated by legislation.

“The regulator does a lot of really, really great work,” she says. “But it needs checks and balances.”

Aneka is also watching developments in know-your-client obligations and changes to securities regulation across Canada. Whistleblower litigation is of particular interest to her as the area evolves and she is currently representing a whistleblower in a reprisal matter in the securities space.

Aneka Jiwaji – Co-Founder and Counsel, Jiwaji Law
Graduate of Osgoode’s Professional LLM in Securities Law (2024)