Bay Street Buzz

This information courtesy of Bill Vlaad, of Vlaad & Co.:

CIBC has announced the following hires and appointments:

· Ted Nash has been appointed Managing Director and Head of Strategic Merchant Banking. Ted was previously Managing Director and Head of Mergers & Acquisitions on the Investment Banking team

· Michael Boyd has been hired as Managing Director and Head of Mergers & Acquisitions for the Investment Banking team. He was previously Managing Director at Banc of America Merrill Lynch

· Allan Kimberley, currently Managing Director and Head of Real Estate, has been appointed Vice Chairman, Real Estate Investment Banking

· Replacing Allan is Paul Farrell as Managing Director and Head of Real Estate Investment Banking. He was Managing Director and Head of Merchant Banking

· David Scott, currently Managing Director and Co-Head Global Mining group has been appointed Vice-Chairman, Mining Investment Banking

· Managing Director and Co-Head Global Mining, Rick McCreary, has been appointed Managing Director and Head of Global Mining

· Chris Hind has been appointed Deputy Head, Mergers & Acquisitions. He was previously Managing Director, Mergers & Acquisitions Investment Banking

Joining the Sales team at Connor, Clark & Lunn Private Capital Group is Steve Satov. Previously Steve was at Thomas Weisel Partners.

Benjamin Gaspar joined the Investment Banking team at Banc of America Merrill Lynch, Montreal as Vice-President. Benjamin was previously Vice-President at Lazard Investment Banking, Montreal.

Octagon Capital has hired Kat Tosine to its Equity Sales desk. Kat was most recently at Evergreen Capital.

Two other moves from Banc of America Merrill Lynch are Analyst, Heather Wolf, to UBS Securities in New York and Ryan Forwell, who joined National Bank Financial as Associate, Mergers & Acquisitions.

Peter Coffey has joined Instinet as Vice President. Peter was most recently Head of Sales at E*TRADE Capital Markets.

Jeff Fan will be joining Scotia Capital as Equity Research Analyst, Telecommunication & Cable. Previously Jeff was at UBS Securities.

Oil & Gas Analyst Peter Doig has moved from Scotia Capital to GMP Securities.

Senior Vice President, Michael Switt is leaving GE Energy Financial Services to join Manulife Capital as Vice President, Project Finance.

Graeme Jennings has joined Blackmont Capital as Research Associate, Mining. Most recently he was at Interward Asset Management.

Christina Keeler joined RBC Capital Markets as a Vice President on the Institutional FX Sales desk. Christina was most recently on the EMEA FX Hedge Fund Sales desk at JPMorgan in London.

The Business Development Bank of Canada has announced the team that will be managing a new private sector growth capital fund, Tandem Expansion Fund. This fund was co-founded by Charles Sirois, Chairman of CIBC, and Brent Belzberg, Founder and Senior Managing Partner of TorQuest. The team is as follows:

· David Bookbinder, a Senior Business Executive with more than 25 years experience as an Investor, Operating Executive and as a Co-Founder of Marsulex Inc., Chemtrade Logistics and SPI Polyols

· André Gauthier was previously Managing Partner of Echo Capital, a venture capital firm, and served as Executive Vice President and CFO of Telesystem International Wireless until it was sold to Vodafone in 2005

· Christopher Legg was a Partner at Argo Global Capital, a venture capital firm based in Boston, and was previously an Investment Banker in the Technology group at Credit Suisse

· Alex Moorhead was Chief Executive Officer and a Co-Founder of Loyalty Management Group, a London, England based company created in 2001, which was acquired by Groupe Aeroplan for $755 million in December 2007

MRM