Form F-9 Files Dataset

The Form F-9 Files Dataset is a closed corpus of Form F-9 and Form F-9/A registration statements filed on EDGAR by Canadian foreign private issuers under the U.S./Canada Multijurisdictional Disclosure System (MJDS) to register investment-grade non-convertible debt and preferred securities under the Securities Act of 1933. Each record is the complete EDGAR submission for one F-9 or F-9/A accession number, packaged as a folder that pairs a structured metadata.json descriptor with the non-image documents EDGAR received — the Canadian-anchored registration statement, the Form F-X consent and power of attorney, indentures, underwriting agreements, legal opinions, and auditor consents. The dataset spans the form's full active EDGAR life from May 2002 through its rescission on September 2, 2011, when Section 939A of the Dodd-Frank Act forced the SEC to remove credit-rating-based eligibility tests from federal securities rules and redirect Canadian MJDS debt registrants to Form F-10. Filings are distributed in a ZIP container format containing HTML, JSON, and TXT files, organized by year and month.

Dataset APIs

Dataset Files

What This Dataset Contains

The dataset contains every Form F-9 and Form F-9/A registration statement accepted by EDGAR between May 2002 and September 2011, the entire interval during which Form F-9 was an active registration form. Form F-9 was the Securities Act of 1933 registration form used by eligible Canadian foreign private issuers to register investment-grade debt securities and investment-grade non-convertible preferred securities under MJDS. The MJDS framework, adopted in 1991, allowed qualifying Canadian issuers to satisfy U.S. registration largely through disclosure documents prepared under Canadian securities law and reviewed by Canadian regulators, with the SEC accepting that home-jurisdiction disclosure as the principal prospectus.

Because of that design, a Form F-9 filing is a thin "wrapper" registration: the face page identifies the issuer and the offering, the registrant elects a method of effectiveness under MJDS General Instructions II.A through II.G, the calculation-of-registration-fee table sets the fee, and substantive disclosure is incorporated by reference from the Canadian prospectus rather than restated. Form F-9/A records are pre-effective or post-effective amendments built on the same template. The form was rescinded effective September 2, 2011 under Section 939A of the Dodd-Frank Act, which removed credit-rating-based eligibility criteria from federal securities rules; Canadian issuers were redirected to Form F-10. The dataset therefore has a fixed, closed temporal scope. Each accession is delivered as a ZIP-archived folder of HTML, JSON, and TXT files; image binaries (.jpg, .gif, GRAPHIC-typed entries) are deliberately excluded from the on-disk record.

Content Structure of a Single Record

What one record represents

A single record is the complete EDGAR submission for one Form F-9 or Form F-9/A filing, packaged as a folder named with the 18-digit unpunctuated SEC accession number. Each folder pairs a metadata.json descriptor with the non-image documents that EDGAR received as part of the submission. The unit of observation is therefore one Securities Act registration statement (or one amendment) filed by a Canadian foreign private issuer under MJDS, preserved with its full textual document set and a structured filing header.

Content layers in a single record

Each record has two layers:

1. metadata.json — a single JSON object describing the filing as a whole: form type, accession number, acceptance timestamp, document inventory, registrant entities, and source-system links.
2. The submission documents — the EDGAR files referenced by that metadata, stored flat in the same folder (no nested subdirectories). Each document carries the EDGAR SGML envelope (<DOCUMENT> ... </DOCUMENT> with <TYPE>, <SEQUENCE>, <FILENAME>, <DESCRIPTION>, <TEXT> headers) wrapped around an inner HTML or plain-text body. The file-types found in the dataset are HTML, JSON, and TXT: HTML for the registration statement and most exhibits, JSON for the metadata descriptor, and TXT for any ancillary plain-text documents present in the original submission.

On-disk filenames mirror the names assigned by the original filer in EDGAR (typically short, opaque tokens such as df9.htm for the primary registration statement and dex51.htm for Exhibit 5.1). The reliable mapping from on-disk file to logical document role runs through metadata.json.documentFormatFiles[], where each entry's documentUrl ends with the on-disk filename and the type and description fields disclose the document's regulatory role.

The metadata.json descriptor

The descriptor's meaningful fields are:

• formType — F-9 (initial registration statement) or F-9/A (amendment).
• accessionNo — canonical dashed SEC accession number (e.g., 0001193125-11-139455).
• filedAt — ISO 8601 timestamp with Eastern Time offset, capturing the EDGAR acceptance moment.
• description — the standard EDGAR description for the form ("Registration of securities of certain investment grade debt or preferred securities of certain Canadian issuers").
• linkToFilingDetails, linkToTxt, linkToHtml — URLs to the EDGAR filing index, the complete submission .txt archive, and the primary HTML document on sec.gov.
• linkToXbrl — empty string; Form F-9 was never within the XBRL tagging mandate.
• documentFormatFiles — array of every document attached to the original submission, including entries for image files that have been excluded from the on-disk record. Each entry carries sequence (string), size (bytes, as a string), documentUrl, description, and type (the EDGAR document type, e.g., F-9, EX-5.1, EX-23.1, F-X, GRAPHIC). The trailing "Complete submission text file" entry uses a single-space sequence (" ").
• entities — array of parties associated with the filing. Each entry is a structured object with companyName (with role appended in parentheses, e.g., "... (Filer)"), cik (zero-padded 10 digits), fileNo, irsNo, fiscalYearEnd (MMDD), stateOfIncorporation (an SEC two-character code; for Form F-9 this is a Canadian province/territory code such as A0–A9, with A5 corresponding to Nova Scotia), act (Securities Act, 33), sic (industry code with descriptive label), filmNo, and type (the entity's role-coded form type).
• id — 32-character hex identifier for the dataset record.
• seriesAndClassesContractsInformation — empty array for Form F-9 (the field exists for investment-company series/class data).
• dataFiles — empty array; Form F-9 submissions carry no XBRL or other structured-data attachments.

The primary Form F-9 document

The principal disclosure document is the registration statement itself, stored as an HTML file (commonly df9.htm or similar) and wrapped in the EDGAR SGML envelope with <TYPE>F-9 (or F-9/A) and <SEQUENCE>1. The HTML body inside that envelope contains the registration statement in the order prescribed by the form's instructions:

• Face page (cover). Registrant's legal name in English (and any French equivalent), jurisdiction of incorporation or organization, primary SIC code, IRS employer identification number where applicable, registered office address and telephone, name and address of the U.S. agent for service of process, "copies-to" U.S. legal counsel, and the principal Canadian jurisdiction whose laws and regulators govern the offering.
• MJDS effectiveness election. Indicates which of MJDS General Instructions II.A through II.G the registrant relies on, including, where applicable, immediate effectiveness on filing for shelf takedowns.
• Calculation-of-registration-fee table. Lists each class of securities being registered, the amount registered, the proposed maximum offering price per unit and aggregate, and the registration fee. A footnote area reconciles fees carried forward from earlier registration statements where Rule 457 offsets apply.
• Body of the registration statement. Under MJDS this is short: it primarily incorporates by reference the Canadian short-form prospectus (preliminary, final, or base shelf), prospectus supplements, the Annual Information Form (AIF), and other Canadian disclosure documents rather than restating substantive disclosure. It also contains the standard MJDS undertakings, indemnification disclosure, and reference to Rule 415 shelf procedures where relevant.
• Exhibit index. Lists each exhibit by Item 10 number and description.
• Signature pages. Signatures of the issuer's authorized officers and a majority of directors (or persons performing similar functions), and the signature of the U.S. authorized representative — typically the same person identified on the face page as agent for service.

Because MJDS depends heavily on incorporation by reference, the substantive prospectus disclosure is frequently absent as a separate file in a Form F-9 submission and instead points to prior Form 6-K filings, prior MJDS filings, and Canadian SEDAR documents. Other Form F-9 records do attach the Canadian prospectus or prospectus supplement as a submitted exhibit. The variation is filer-driven.

Exhibits and supporting documents

Beyond the primary document, a Form F-9 submission typically carries a set of exhibits drawn from the form's Item 10 exhibit list. Each exhibit is its own SGML-wrapped file: the <TYPE> header carries the EDGAR exhibit code, <SEQUENCE> matches the metadata sequence, <FILENAME> matches the on-disk filename, and <DESCRIPTION> carries a human-readable label. Exhibits commonly seen across the dataset include:

• The Canadian short-form prospectus or prospectus supplement, where attached rather than incorporated by reference.
• Form F-X — the Appointment of Agent for Service of Process and Undertaking, a separate MJDS form filed either as an exhibit inside the F-9 submission or as a companion filing, by which the issuer consents to U.S. service of process and undertakes to furnish certain documents to the SEC.
• Underwriting agreements (EX-1.1).
• Indentures and supplemental indentures governing the debt securities (EX-4.1, EX-4.2, etc.).
• Forms of debt security or note (EX-4.x).
• Legal opinions on the validity of the securities and on Canadian and U.S. tax matters (EX-5.1, EX-8.1).
• Auditor consents from the issuer's Canadian auditor (EX-23.1) and other expert consents.
• Powers of attorney executed by directors and officers.
• Statements of eligibility on Form T-1 from the indenture trustee, where applicable.

The HTML body of each exhibit ranges from short single-page consent letters and powers of attorney to lengthy contractual instruments with definitions, schedules, and signature blocks. Exhibits are typically signed in the issuer's principal Canadian city (Toronto, Calgary, Halifax, Montreal, Vancouver, etc.) and reflect Canadian law firms, audit firms, and trustees.

What the dataset record includes

For each accession number, the record includes:

• The structured metadata.json descriptor.
• Every non-image document from the original EDGAR submission listed in documentFormatFiles, in its native EDGAR-wrapped HTML or plain-text form.
• A complete enumeration of the original document set inside metadata.json.documentFormatFiles, including entries for excluded image files (whose documentUrl values still point to sec.gov even though the binaries are not on disk).

What is excluded or structurally separate

Image files (.jpg, .gif, and other graphic formats classified by EDGAR as GRAPHIC) are deliberately omitted from the on-disk record. Their metadata entries remain visible in documentFormatFiles, so any consumer that needs the graphics can fetch them from sec.gov, but they are not present inside the dataset folder.

Documents that the issuer incorporated by reference rather than filed — typically the Canadian short-form prospectus, the AIF, prior MD&A, prior financial statements, and earlier indentures — are by definition not part of the F-9 submission and therefore not in the record; they live in the referenced earlier filings, often Form 6-K or earlier MJDS filings such as F-9, F-10, or F-X. Underlying Canadian SEDAR-only documents are likewise outside the dataset's scope.

Structural evolution across the coverage window

Form F-9's required content was relatively stable because the form sat inside the jointly administered MJDS framework. Several changes during May 2002 through September 2011 nonetheless affect what appears in records:

• Eligibility narrowing. Form F-9 was available for investment-grade debt and preferred securities, and at earlier points in the period also for certain convertible securities meeting investment-grade tests. SEC rule revisions tightened the rating-agency definitions used to determine "investment grade" eligibility, and fee tables in later filings reflect annually updated fee rates set by SEC fee orders.
• WKSI and shelf-registration interaction. The 2005 Securities Offering Reform did not directly amend Form F-9, but it shaped how Canadian shelf registrants timed takedowns and prospectus supplements; later-period Form F-9 filings more frequently rely on shelf-style effectiveness and incorporate base shelf prospectuses by reference rather than attaching them.
• Form F-X coupling. Every Form F-9 filing across the period was accompanied by a Form F-X consent and power of attorney, either as an exhibit inside the submission or as a separately filed companion form. The structural pairing is consistent throughout.
• Rescission under Dodd-Frank. Section 939A of the Dodd-Frank Act (enacted July 2010) directed federal agencies to remove references to credit ratings from regulations. The SEC's implementing release rescinded Form F-9 effective September 2, 2011 because its "investment grade" eligibility test depended on credit ratings; Canadian issuers were directed to Form F-10. The dataset's terminal date reflects this regulatory cut-off rather than a data-collection boundary.

Format conventions

Form F-9 entered EDGAR after the SEC's mandatory HTML era began, so primary documents and exhibits in the dataset are predominantly HTML wrapped in EDGAR SGML envelopes, with occasional plain-text documents. The SGML wrapper uses bare, unquoted SGML tags (<TYPE>, <SEQUENCE>, <FILENAME>, <DESCRIPTION>, <TEXT>) without closing counterparts; HTML parsers generally need to skip past these header lines before parsing the inner <HTML> body.

Interpretation notes

• Incorporation by reference is dominant. A Form F-9 record's on-disk footprint can be small precisely because most disclosure lives in earlier referenced filings. Treating record size or document count as a proxy for offering substance will mislead.
• Filenames are filer-conventional, not standardized. Tokens such as d, dex, dexNN, and short three-to-six-letter abbreviations are common, but no naming convention is enforced. Always join through metadata.json.documentFormatFiles[] to determine each file's regulatory role.
• stateOfIncorporation codes are Canadian provinces. Because Form F-9 is restricted to Canadian foreign private issuers under MJDS, the SEC two-character codes encountered (A0–A9 for provinces and territories) must not be interpreted as U.S. state abbreviations.
• Multiple entities per filing. The entities array can carry several roles — filer, co-registrant guarantor, and subject — each with its own CIK and identifying metadata; co-registration is common when subsidiary issuers' debt is guaranteed by a parent.
• String-typed numeric fields. documentFormatFiles[].sequence and size are string-encoded in JSON, and the trailing "Complete submission text file" entry uses a single space as its sequence value, which must be handled when sorting documents by sequence.
• Amendments share the record shape. Form F-9/A records are structurally identical to Form F-9 records, differing only in the formType value, the content of the registration statement (which marks amended sections), and the exhibit set (which typically contains only the documents that have changed plus refreshed consents).
• Document-list reconciliation. Because image files are excluded from the on-disk record while their entries remain in documentFormatFiles, any process that walks the metadata and expects every listed document to exist on disk must filter out GRAPHIC-typed entries or tolerate missing files for image MIME types.

Who Files or Publishes This Dataset, and When

Form F-9 is event-driven, not periodic, and the trigger is the issuer's decision to offer MJDS-eligible securities into the United States in reliance on the Multijurisdictional Disclosure System rather than on a conventional Securities Act form.

Who files

Eligible filers were a narrow, well-defined population:

• Canadian foreign private issuers that met the MJDS "substantial issuer" thresholds in MJDS General Instruction I, namely: organized in Canada or a Canadian province or territory; foreign private issuers under Securities Act Rule 405 / Exchange Act Rule 3b-4; subject to and in compliance with Canadian continuous-disclosure obligations for at least the prior 12 months; and meeting the public float test (historically CAD $180 million or more).
• Finance subsidiaries of qualifying Canadian parents, where the parent fully and unconditionally guaranteed the registered securities. In those cases the parent and the subsidiary appear as co-registrants on the same filing.

The securities being registered had to be non-convertible investment-grade debt or non-convertible investment-grade preferred securities, with the investment-grade rating coming from at least one NRSRO at the time of sale and meeting the rating thresholds in General Instruction B.

Excluded from the F-9 path: U.S. domestic issuers, non-Canadian foreign private issuers, Canadian issuers offering equity or convertible securities, Canadian issuers offering below-investment-grade debt, and smaller Canadian issuers that did not meet the MJDS thresholds.

When the record is created

A record is generated when:

• A qualifying Canadian issuer initiates a new MJDS-eligible debt or preferred offering, typically by wrapping a Canadian short-form base shelf prospectus (cleared by the principal Canadian regulator) with a Form F-9 facing page and the limited additional disclosure the form requires.
• The issuer files an F-9/A amendment to update the registration statement: pre-effective amendments to complete required disclosure or exhibits, or post-effective amendments to refresh a shelf, conform to amendments to the underlying Canadian prospectus, or file underwriting agreements, indentures, opinions, or consents.

Effectiveness generally followed Rule 467 MJDS mechanics, which contemplated effectiveness on filing for qualifying registrations; the SEC did not perform a duplicative substantive review of the Canadian prospectus. There is no recurring cadence: an issuer with no further offering plans simply does not file another Form F-9. Each F-9/A in the dataset references the same registration file number as the original F-9.

Form F-X coupling

Every Form F-9 filing is paired with Form F-X, the appointment of a U.S. agent for service of process and consent to U.S. federal court jurisdiction for federal securities-law claims arising from the offering. F-X is filed concurrently with the F-9 (or referenced where a current F-X is already on file) and appears as a routine companion document alongside the Canadian prospectus, legal opinions, and standard Securities Act exhibits.

Closed temporal scope

Form F-9 was adopted in 1991 as part of the original SEC-CSA Multijurisdictional Disclosure System. Section 939A of the Dodd-Frank Act (2010) required the SEC to remove credit-rating-based eligibility tests from its rules. Because Form F-9 eligibility was built directly on an NRSRO investment-grade rating, the SEC rescinded Form F-9 effective September 2011 (Release No. 33-9245) and directed affected issuers to register on Form F-10 instead, with transition relief for existing F-9 shelves. The dataset therefore has a fixed window: F-9 and F-9/A submissions on EDGAR from May 2002 through the September 2011 rescission. No further F-9 filings occur after that date.

Important distinctions

• Filer vs. other parties on the document: The EDGAR filer is the registrant (or co-registrants where a parent guarantee is involved). Underwriters, trustees, and rating agencies named in the prospectus are not filers of the record.
• Issuer eligibility is offering-specific: An issuer that qualified for one F-9 could lose eligibility for a later offering if its public float or Canadian reporting status fell below MJDS thresholds, even if the new securities were investment-grade.
• Filed, not furnished: Form F-9 and F-9/A are filed under the Securities Act and carry Section 11 liability, subject to the MJDS framework.

How This Dataset Differs From Similar Datasets or Filings

Form F-9 occupies a narrow corner of the SEC registration regime: the Multijurisdictional Disclosure System for Canadian issuers, restricted to investment-grade debt and preferred securities, and closed at September 2011 when Dodd-Frank Section 939A removed regulatory reliance on NRSRO ratings. The most useful comparisons fall into three groups: other MJDS forms (F-10, F-7, F-8, F-80, 40-F, F-X), non-MJDS foreign private issuer forms (F-1, F-3), and the domestic shelf analog (S-3).

Form F-10 (direct successor)

F-10 is the operational successor to F-9. After September 2011, Canadian MJDS issuers that had used F-9 for investment-grade debt or preferred securities were redirected to F-10, which covers debt and equity and imposes no investment-grade requirement. F-10 is broader in security type and remains active; F-9 is closed and confined to investment-grade fixed-income. For post-2011 Canadian MJDS debt issuance, use F-10. For the 2002-2011 investment-grade slice, F-9 is the only direct source.

Form F-7 (MJDS rights offerings)

Form F-7 shares F-9's filer population and reliance on Canadian prospectus disclosure but registers only pro rata rights offerings to existing holders. Different transaction trigger, different security context. Complementary, not substitutable.

Forms F-8 and F-80 (MJDS exchange offers and business combinations)

Form F-8 and Form F-80 register securities issued in business combinations and exchange offers involving Canadian issuers. They share MJDS mechanics with F-9 (Canadian disclosure, F-X companion) but are M&A-driven rather than capital-raising. Use them alongside F-9 to map total MJDS activity; exclude them when isolating Canadian investment-grade debt registration.

Form F-3 (non-MJDS short-form registration)

Form F-3 is the closest functional analog to F-9 outside MJDS: a short-form, incorporation-by-reference registration for seasoned foreign private issuers. The decisive differences are jurisdiction and disclosure regime. F-3 is open to seasoned foreign issuers from any country and uses SEC-format disclosure incorporating Exchange Act filings; F-9 is Canada-only and leans on the Canadian prospectus and continuous-disclosure record. Eligibility tests differ as well (F-3 float and reporting-history thresholds vs. F-9 investment-grade rating).

Form F-1 (non-MJDS long-form registration)

Form F-1 is the long-form Securities Act registration for foreign private issuers that do not qualify for a shorter form. Compared with F-9, F-1 is non-MJDS, jurisdiction-agnostic, and requires full SEC-style disclosure rather than a Canadian prospectus. Useful as a contrast for disclosure depth, not as a substitute.

Form 40-F (MJDS annual report)

Form 40-F is the annual report for Canadian MJDS issuers, the parallel to 10-K (domestic) and 20-F (non-MJDS foreign). It is periodic continuous disclosure, not a registration statement. F-9 prospectuses typically incorporate 40-F by reference, so the datasets are complementary: F-9 captures the registration event, 40-F captures the surrounding annual reporting record for the same issuers.

Form F-X (required companion filing)

F-X is not an alternative to F-9 but a procedural attachment: the appointment of a U.S. agent for service of process and consent to jurisdiction required of MJDS filers. F-X data contains consents and powers of attorney, not offering disclosure. Treat as ancillary to F-9 rather than a comparable dataset.

Form S-3 (domestic shelf analog)

Form S-3 is the domestic-issuer short-form registration commonly used for investment-grade debt shelves. Substantively, S-3 used for investment-grade debt is the closest non-Canadian analog to F-9: both serve seasoned issuers raising fixed-income capital under streamlined review. The boundary is filer population and disclosure regime: S-3 issuers are domestic and file SEC-format disclosure; F-9 issuers are Canadian and rely on Canadian prospectus disclosure under MJDS.

Boundary summary

The Form F-9 Files Dataset is defined by an intersection no neighbor reproduces: (1) Canadian foreign private issuers, (2) MJDS-eligible filings using Canadian prospectus disclosure, (3) investment-grade debt or preferred securities only, tied historically to NRSRO ratings, and (4) a closed window from May 2002 through September 2011. F-10 is the post-2011 substitute but broader in security scope; F-7, F-8, and F-80 cover other MJDS transaction types; F-1, F-3, and S-3 sit outside MJDS or outside Canada; 40-F is periodic rather than transactional; F-X is procedural. For assembling the complete record of Canadian investment-grade debt and preferred share registrations under MJDS during 2002-2011, F-9 is not substitutable.

Who Uses This Dataset

The Form F-9 Files Dataset functions as a reference and research archive rather than a live feed. Different roles draw on different parts of each accession: the Canadian-format prospectus, the Form F-X consent for service of process, indentures, underwriting agreements, U.S. legal opinions, and filing metadata.

Securities lawyers and disclosure counsel

Counsel handling tender offers, consent solicitations, or restructurings of legacy MJDS notes pull the original indentures and supplemental indentures for operative covenants, events of default, redemption mechanics, and trustee provisions still binding outstanding bonds. Disclosure counsel structuring later F-10 offerings study how prior registrants framed risk factors, the investment-grade eligibility test, and incorporation by reference of Canadian documents. The Form F-X is direct evidence of the appointed U.S. agent for service of process in litigation against the issuer or its successor.

Debt capital markets bankers

DCM coverage of Canadian issuers uses underwriting agreements to recover lead managers, syndicate composition, gross spreads, and over-allotment terms across the 2002-2011 cohort. Cover pages and front matter supply size, coupon, maturity, ranking, and use of proceeds. Output: pitch comps, fee benchmarks, and migration analysis from F-9 to F-10.

Credit analysts and fixed-income researchers

Buy-side and sell-side credit teams recover original disclosure for F-9-registered notes that may still be trading. The prospectus and indenture supply ranking, negative pledge, change-of-control puts, cross-default thresholds, and guarantee structure — the contractual substrate for credit work. Researchers also profile sector mix, tenor distribution, and rating dependency across the closed cohort.

M&A and restructuring diligence teams

Diligence teams on acquisitions of Canadian targets or restructurings of outstanding MJDS debt pull every F-9 and F-9/A for the target. Indentures and underwriting agreements identify surviving obligations, required noteholder consents, and how change-of-control and assignment provisions apply.

Compliance, trustee, and custody operations

Compliance, transfer-agent, and trustee teams trace registration history when a legacy note surfaces in custody, settlement, or a corporate-action workflow. The dataset links accession to original registrant, F-X agent, indenture trustee, and the amendment chain in F-9/A filings — inputs for entity verification, sanctions review on legacy counterparties, and trustee-succession analysis.

Academic and policy researchers

Securities-regulation and financial-economics researchers use the dataset as the primary corpus for studying MJDS, NRSRO-rating-dependent eligibility, and the effect of Dodd-Frank Section 939A. Because F-9 was rescinded specifically to remove a credit-rating reference, the corpus is a clean setting for studying how a rating-dependent pathway functioned and how its removal redirected issuance to F-10. Policy analysts use the same material for disclosure-regime reform proposals.

Reference-data and fixed-income engineering teams

Data engineers populate historical bond master files with issuer, instrument, and offering records originating in the F-9 channel. Metadata supplies accession, filer identifier, and filing date as primary keys; prospectuses and indentures yield CUSIPs, principal amounts, coupons, and maturities. Used to backfill legacy tables and link retired securities to successor issuers after corporate actions.

NLP and RAG developers on cross-border disclosure

Teams building retrieval and language-model systems on securities text use the corpus for MJDS prospectus prose, F-X attachments, U.S. counsel opinions on Canadian issuers, and indenture exhibits. Conventions differ from U.S.-format S- and F- statements, which makes the dataset useful for training and evaluating models that handle multijurisdictional filings and extract instrument-level facts.

Specific Use Cases

The Form F-9 Files Dataset supports a small set of concrete workflows tied to its closed corpus of MJDS investment-grade registrations from May 2002 through September 2011.

• Recovering operative indenture terms for legacy Canadian notes still outstanding. Pull EX-4.x indentures and supplemental indentures from F-9 and F-9/A filings for a target issuer to extract negative-pledge clauses, change-of-control puts, cross-default thresholds, and trustee succession provisions. Used by restructuring counsel and trustee operations teams to confirm covenants binding bonds that are still trading.

• Building an underwriter league table for Canadian investment-grade debt, 2002-2011. Parse EX-1.1 underwriting agreements across the cohort to extract lead managers, syndicate composition, gross spreads, and over-allotment terms, joined to issuer and offering size from the face page and fee table. Output: DCM pitch comps and historical fee benchmarks for Canadian MJDS debt.

• Mapping F-9 to F-10 issuer migration after the Dodd-Frank Section 939A rescission. Use metadata.json.entities[].cik and filedAt to identify each F-9 registrant's last filing before September 2, 2011, then join to subsequent F-10 filings to measure migration timing, gaps in shelf coverage, and changes in offering structure. Supports policy research on the effect of removing rating-based eligibility.

• Extracting the U.S. agent for service of process for each Canadian issuer. Parse the Form F-X exhibit (or companion filing referenced in documentFormatFiles) to recover the appointed U.S. agent's name and address per registrant and accession. Used by litigators serving process on Canadian issuers or their successors and by compliance teams reconciling agent-of-record records.

• Profiling MJDS incorporation-by-reference patterns. Walk the primary df9.htm registration statement to identify which Canadian documents (base shelf prospectus, AIF, prior 6-K filings, MD&A) each filer incorporates by reference versus attaches as an exhibit. Supports disclosure counsel benchmarking on how peer Canadian shelf registrants handled the Canadian-prospectus-as-principal-disclosure mechanic.

• Backfilling fixed-income reference data for retired and outstanding MJDS bonds. Use metadata.json accession, CIK, and filedAt as primary keys; extract CUSIPs, principal amounts, coupons, maturities, and ranking from the registration statement, fee table, and form-of-note exhibits. Output: historical bond master records linking retired securities to current successor issuers after corporate actions.

• Training and evaluating extraction models on cross-border disclosure language. Use the SGML-wrapped HTML primary documents, F-X attachments, U.S. counsel opinions on Canadian-law securities, and Canadian-format indenture exhibits as a labeled corpus distinct from U.S.-format S- and F- registrations. Useful for benchmarking instrument-fact extraction (issuer, ranking, guarantor, trustee, governing law) on multijurisdictional filings.

Dataset Access

Dataset Index JSON API: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-f9-files.json

This endpoint returns dataset-level metadata along with the list of all available container files. The metadata includes the dataset name, description, last updated timestamp, earliest sample date, total record count and total size, form types covered, container format, and the file types included in each container. For every container, the response provides a download URL, the relative key, file size, record count, and the timestamp of the most recent update. This makes it straightforward to monitor daily which containers were refreshed in the latest run and to selectively download only the containers that changed. This endpoint does not require an API key.

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          {
        

          2
            "datasetId": "1f13365b-9ae0-69ed-a747-9108406f8ca6",
        

          3
            "datasetDownloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-f9-files.zip",
        

          4
            "name": "Form F-9 Files Dataset",
        

          5
            "updatedAt": "2026-04-15T18:13:14.018Z",
        

          6
            "earliestSampleDate": "2002-05-01",
        

          7
            "totalRecords": 893,
        

          8
            "totalSize": 16619348,
        

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            "formTypes": ["F-9", "F-9/A"],
        

          10
            "containerFormat": "ZIP",
        

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            "fileTypes": ["HTML", "JSON", "TXT"],
        

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            "containers": [
        

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              {
        

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                "downloadUrl": "https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-f9-files/2011/2011-09.zip",
        

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                "key": "2011/2011-09.zip",
        

          16
                "size": 482311,
        

          17
                "records": 12,
        

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                "updatedAt": "2026-04-15T18:13:14.018Z"
        

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              }
        

          20
            ]
        

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          }
        

Download Entire Dataset: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-f9-files.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY

Use this URL to download the complete dataset as a single ZIP archive containing every Form F-9 and Form F-9/A filing from May 2002 through September 2011. This endpoint requires an API key.

Download Single Container: https://api.sec-api.io/datasets/form-f9-files/2011/2011-09.zip?token=YOUR_API_KEY

Use this URL pattern to download one monthly container instead of the full archive. Replace the year and month segments with the desired container key returned by the dataset index API. This endpoint requires an API key.

Frequently Asked Questions

What forms does this dataset cover?

The dataset covers Form F-9 (initial registration statement) and Form F-9/A (pre-effective and post-effective amendments). Both are Securities Act of 1933 registration forms used by Canadian foreign private issuers under the Multijurisdictional Disclosure System to register investment-grade non-convertible debt and preferred securities.

What does one record in this dataset represent?

One record is the complete EDGAR submission for a single F-9 or F-9/A accession number, packaged as a folder named with the 18-digit unpunctuated accession number. The folder contains a metadata.json descriptor and the non-image documents EDGAR received — the registration statement, the Form F-X consent, indentures, underwriting agreements, legal opinions, and other exhibits.

Who is required to file Form F-9?

Eligible filers are Canadian foreign private issuers that meet the MJDS "substantial issuer" thresholds in General Instruction I (organized in Canada, foreign private issuer status, at least 12 months of compliant Canadian continuous disclosure, and the historical CAD $180 million public float test) and that are registering non-convertible investment-grade debt or preferred securities rated investment-grade by at least one NRSRO. Finance subsidiaries of qualifying Canadian parents may also file when the parent fully and unconditionally guarantees the registered securities, with both entities appearing as co-registrants.

What time period does the dataset cover, and why does it end in September 2011?

The dataset covers F-9 and F-9/A filings from May 2002 through September 2, 2011. Section 939A of the Dodd-Frank Act required federal agencies to remove credit-rating-based eligibility tests from their rules, and because Form F-9 eligibility was built directly on an NRSRO investment-grade rating, the SEC rescinded the form effective September 2, 2011 (Release No. 33-9245) and redirected affected issuers to Form F-10.

What file format is the dataset distributed in?

The dataset is distributed in ZIP container format, organized into monthly containers under year directories (for example, 2011/2011-09.zip). Inside each container, files are HTML (registration statements and exhibits), JSON (the metadata.json descriptor), and TXT (ancillary plain-text documents). Image binaries classified by EDGAR as GRAPHIC are deliberately excluded, although their entries remain visible in metadata.json.documentFormatFiles.

How does this dataset differ from the Form F-10 Files Dataset?

F-10 is the operational successor to F-9: after September 2, 2011, Canadian MJDS issuers that had used F-9 for investment-grade debt or preferred securities were redirected to F-10, which covers debt and equity and imposes no investment-grade requirement. F-9 is a closed corpus tied to NRSRO investment-grade fixed-income; F-10 is broader in security scope and remains active. For the 2002-2011 investment-grade slice of Canadian MJDS registration, F-9 is the only direct source.

Is the Canadian short-form prospectus included in every record?

Not always. Because MJDS depends heavily on incorporation by reference, the Canadian short-form prospectus, the Annual Information Form, and other Canadian disclosure documents are frequently incorporated by reference from prior Form 6-K filings, prior MJDS filings, or Canadian SEDAR documents rather than attached. Other Form F-9 records do attach the Canadian prospectus or prospectus supplement as a submitted exhibit. The variation is filer-driven, and consumers should expect both patterns.