Custody and Clearance

At the core of our Prime Brokerage offering is our integrated and robust clearance and custody framework. Our technology and reach enables us to deal with escalating volumes for a multitude of complex products, instruments and currencies. And our dedicated Prime Brokerage operations staff ensures that your trades settle correctly and in the appropriate timeframe.

Client Service

Our experienced on-boarding, client service, reporting and trading teams work with your operations group to monitor accounts, implement trading strategies and provide advice on customized portfolio reporting. Your fund is administered by a dedicated client service representative who provides personalized coverage and acts as your go-to person to connect you to the right resources within CIBC.

Securities Lending

Our Securities Lending desk maintains a deep and reliable pool of securities to allow our clients to implement their short strategies to the fullest extent while maximizing the stability of their ongoing short positions. We also maintain excellent agency relationships with Canada's leading custodians, in particular with CIBC Mellon. Our lending team assists PMs and traders by providing market information such as flow and liquidity commentary, real-time locates, as well as identifying potential trends and opportunities in the marketplace for our clients' consideration and evaluation.

Financing

Through innovative financing products, CIBC helps clients to realize their investment mandates. For clients who qualify, collateral requirements are calculated on the overall portfolio held with CIBC to provide for the best use of a fund's capital.

Portfolio Accounting and Web Reporting

Timely and accurate information is vital to your efficiency and success. That's why CIBC has implemented Advent GENEVA as our portfolio management and accounting technology. Our prime brokerage platform supports multi-currency, multi-asset class strategies and provides adaptability to emerging instruments and evolving strategies. As the world's leading real-time, multi-currency, multi-asset-class accounting and reporting solution for hedge funds, Advent GENEVA provides our clients with a scaleable platform from which to service large and small funds who are growing in size and complexity.

Our PrimeDirect web-reporting portal allows our fund clients to build custom reports on-the-fly to suit the specific needs of traders, portfolio managers and operations staff. Another benefit of PrimeDirect is the ability to receive a fund manager's trades throughout the day and view updated positions in real-time.

Trade Execution

All hedge fund clients receive integrated trade execution support from our Alternative Execution Services group. As a leader in electronic trading in Canada, Alternative Execution Services offers fast, reliable execution to route trades to North American execution venues without intervention. Our low-latency, high-availability infrastructure for electronic order routing to execution venues (TSX, NASDAQ, NYSE, Dark Pools, ATSes, ECNs, etc.) provides our clients with direct control over their executions for reduced commissions.

Hedge fund clients are also provided with access to our portfolio and quantitative trading desks. Our Portfolio Trading (PT) desk specializes in algorithmic trading and customizable trading methods. Supported by an in-house development team, our PT desk works with traders and PMs to create custom code and trading models based on client parameters. Our PT group also offers a range of pre- and post-trade analytics and customized reports based on client needs.

Hedge Fund Research

Our top-ranked equity research team features analysts dedicated to quantitative, statistical arbitrage, index and merger-arbitrage products for our alternative investment clients. With research covering quantitative equity long-short, pairs trading, stub trading, index arbitrage and event-driven alpha-generating arbitrage strategies, we provide our clients with various proprietary trading strategies. Our research group publishes our flagship Hedge Fund Insights series on a quarterly basis.

Capital Introduction

We work closely with start-up and established hedge fund clients to provide targeted introductions to select investors. Our tailored events introduce managers to incubator funds, fund-of-fund managers, pension consultants and high-net-worth individuals from our CIBC Wood Gundy private client network. For fund managers interested in introductions, we take the time to understand your mandates and investment management process and make meaningful introductions to the capital that best suits your style and fund.

Start-Up Services

We have refined our client on-boarding process to help start-up managers get their new funds to market quickly and efficiently with as few headaches as possible. Drawing on our broad network of relationships in the legal community - among regulators, fund administrators, compliance consultants, accountants, hedge fund hotels, plus technology and marketing firms - we can provide your fund with appropriate referrals and counsel on how to hit the ground running.

Our Prime Brokerage group can also provide suggestions on a range of vendor services including accounting systems, order management systems and trading systems. We also provide our clients with active dialogue and feedback on pitch-books and presentations.