Free Republic

CIBC World Markets has prepared a presentation (a PDF file) that predicts $100/bbl oil in two years. CIBC is a major Canadian Bank with 37,000 employees.

NEW YORK — Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce has agreed to pay $2.4 billion to resolve investors' claims it helped hide losses at Enron Corp., marking the biggest individual settlement since the energy trader collapsed in a massive accounting fraud. The settlement announced Tuesday with the Toronto-based bank — Canada's fifth-largest financial institution and the operator of the securities firm CIBC World Markets — could help compensate investors who lost tens of billions of dollars when Enron failed in 2001. Combined with similar agreements with Citigroup Inc. and JPMorgan Chase & Co. and others, the settlements have now reached more...

<p>A swanky office in Beverly Hills, brash investment bankers scoring hundred-million-dollar paydays, a spectacular collapse ending in federal investigations. The belly flop of Global Crossing Ltd. seems remarkably similar to the saga of Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc., the investment bank that imploded a dozen years ago. In fact, it may be more than coincidence. At least five key players in the startup of Global Crossing were prominent executives at Drexel.</p>

Ridgeley, West Virginia — Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce has been faxing confidential information about hundreds of its customers to a scrapyard operator in West Virginia for more than three years, and he can't get them to stop. Wade Peer says he has been overwhelmed since 2001 by internal CIBC fund transfer request forms containing the social insurance numbers, home addresses, phone numbers and detailed bank account data of several hundred bank customers. "Had I been a bad guy, I could have got credit cards in their name, I could have assumed their identity. I could have transferred money out...