Canadian rock stars Randy Bachman (back row, third from right) and Ed Robertson (middle row, second from left) helped raise $4.6 million for kids-in-need on CIBC's trading floor in Toronto as part of CIBC Miracle Day -- the bank's annual event, which supports over 450 children's charities across Canada.Handout
Here are some glad tidings for the holidays. The past year has been a bumpy one for Canadian traders, but that did not stop the charitable giving in 2013.
Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce just announced that its "Miracle Day" on Dec. 4 raised $4.6-million, with traders and investment advisors donating all their commissions to childrens' charities. In the past 29 years, the bank has raised $74-million from its Miracle Day program.
CIBC also raised another $1.2-million for United Way with an internal hockey tournament, and the firm's ever-prolific Movember team raised $300,000 for prostate cancer research.
Over at Bank of Montreal, the investment banking and securities arm announced in September that it would donate $1.1-million in commissions to eight charities as part of the firm's "Equity Through Education." The program has been running eight years, and has raised $13.4-million.
Smaller brokerages also got in on the act, with GMP Securities running a charity trading day in summer for the victims of Alberta flooding, and FirstEnergy Capital Corp. cutting a significant cheque and challenging clients to do the same. In a time of austerity in the Canadian securities industry (always a relative thing, to be sure), it's heartening to see that the giving keeps going.